the problematic outfit

doubts even here

2010-07-15T22:50:00.005-04:00

sometimes you find that a store you thought had closed didn't really close at all; it might have just redecorated, or moved to another block. new writing here: http://mickeyant.tumblr.com/

moving on

2009-10-22T22:31:00.004-04:00

i'm hanging up the problematic outfit for a while. i started this project in different technological times, before facebook and twitter made personal blogs seem quaint, almost. also, i started it when i was feeling generally much more frivolous, and that frivolity was somehow more interesting than actual work. a lot of things have happened since then. i've joined a band, made an album, lost the band, took a real job, gained a child, was unwillingly relieved of aforementioned real job, tried to ditch a discouraging career, and watched myself go from mid-thirties to late-thirties in the blink of an eye.

all of that is to say that i feel like i have hardly any time in which to post my idiotic ramblings now that i have daddy responsibilities and am, at the same time, attempting a third act in my work life. to my six loyal readers, i say thank you. i may be back. at the moment i'm not feeling it.

if you're interested in seeing what i'm up to with various works-in-progress (photo, etc.), look to my photo blog, here. better yet, subscribe to the RSS feed.

thanks, guys.

penultimate doesn't mean "very ultimate"

2009-10-15T15:07:00.003-04:00

"Penultimate" means "second to last." It doesn't mean "super ultimate," "really ultimate" or any other such amplification. Please stop. The "So" album by Peter Gabriel is not "one of the penultimate in an artist's career," as I recently learned from a review in the iTunes store. This mistake seems to be gaining traction. I gotta nip this weed in the bud.

2001

2009-10-12T10:49:00.005-04:00

the other day i found this screen grab of what my computer looked like in 2001.

actually, go ahead and tread on them

2009-10-01T12:38:00.007-04:00

oh sad day. it seems that a group of people i totally disagree with has once again co-opted a beloved symbol. the gadsden flag, which as a kid i always thought was synonymous with early american badassness, apparently is a popular symbol for subliterate "tea party" freaks and people who think the president of the united states is a communist from kenya (or is it indonesia now?). i actually own one of these flags. now i guess i have to hide it. thanks, psychos.

p.s.: metallica is going to be mad at you too.

p.p.s.: does the "dont" always lack its apostrophe? i wonder if that is done for historical accuracy.

this is almost too good to be true

2009-09-16T12:59:00.007-04:00

there is a spider named after david bowie. it's not from mars, it's from malaysia. and people say humanity is incapable of goodness. i know carl linnaeus would agree.

little creatures: momentum

2009-08-30T19:43:00.004-04:00

a friend found this blog posting about our short film (in postproduction now).

intern testimonial

2009-08-19T07:48:00.003-04:00

herewith we present a letter from one of the interns, whose identities we strive to protect here at POHQ.

The first day of my new internship, I had a very Problematic Outfit. I'm moving, so I carefully washed one good shirt and chose an outfit the night before. It wasn't until I left the house that I remembered that this shirt is a "bursting buttons" nightmare--the button holes are too big for the buttons and they all fly open. OK, I'll find some safety pins I thought. Plan B involved the cute retro sweater I was wearing that matched the shirt perfectly--I could button that cardigan in the right places over the shirt, right? Not if I left it at the new house while feeding the cats on the way to work! DOH!

Next, I passed the beer distributor and the guys mocked me for looking like Olive Oyl.

Luckily, I wasn't going to the internship until the afternoon, so after striking out finding any safety pins, I went to Rite Aid and got a sewing kit to tighten my button holes. (I felt like one of those dirty postpartum doctors!)

Perfect, right?

It wasn't until the end of the day that I realized that my camisole was NOT shorter than my blouse as I had thought. But it was the same color as my skirt, so hopefully no one noticed!

Sincerely,

the Intrepid Intern

not problematic

2009-08-18T09:05:00.000-04:00

my baby is really large

2009-08-13T21:21:00.001-04:00

from where i sit

2009-08-13T21:17:00.002-04:00

here's the view from my desk at my current freelance gig.

Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

2009-08-06T20:31:00.002-04:00

sweet dreams, john hughes. you made a hundred thousand teenagers believe that we had the keys to the kingdom, and you have our enduring gratitiude.

new york city, july 26th 2001

2009-08-06T17:22:00.002-04:00

washington DC, june 23rd 2007, 5:47 p.m.

2009-08-06T12:51:00.003-04:00

mister serious art guy

2009-08-03T19:36:00.009-04:00

if you go here you will find a tumblr blog where i'll just show my fancy photos and attempt to refrain from the general insolence and nerdiness* that finds its home here.

* naturally i exclude "star wars" haikus from this condemnation. they are, of course, a highly-regarded and refined form. (scroll through the comments if you haven't seen the light.)

you're welcome, unidentified "cool" neighbor

2009-07-27T10:32:00.002-04:00

high bias

2009-07-20T14:27:00.007-04:00

i was digging around in a box of old cassettes this morning looking for something, as one does. this exercise usually yields a great deal of time-wasting, since i get sidetracked easily (look! a Big Country bootleg tape!, etc.) but today i found something interesting. it's an unmarked TDK SA100, the graphics putting it somewhere in the 1990s, i would say. this is usually a bad sign, since that's when i was going through an ill-advised electronica phase - lord knows what's on the tape. i was listening to it on an old walkman run thru garage band, since i don't have a tape deck in my studio. the contents were not aphex twin and daft punk, thankfully, but what sounded like a weird and lonely foghorn. at one point i heard a raspy, low sound - like that of a very slowed-down voice. hold on a minute. several geeky and uninteresting steps later, i found that the same sound, sped up 8.7 times faster, was my own voice saying my own date of birth. creepy! of course, now i have to digitize both sides of a 100-minute tape to find out what the hell it is. my guess: a message with instructions from my future self, just like in "total recall."

* edit: it might also be a tape shot through the legendary PXL-2000, a toy video camera that used audio cassettes to record video, and to which i had a fond attachment for a couple of years.

uncle scotty

2009-07-13T18:05:00.000-04:00

first email

2009-06-29T11:06:00.001-04:00

here's a email my daughter "wrote" to me last night:

dear daddy,

kX4ZWÍ , M , V CVZXDXDV XZCC FB G FC
9 09 , C c bn vyhhu 8h 54qz sxc Z

love
mme

it appears to be some kind of code, or a futuristic robot poem.

another island

2009-06-22T11:08:00.046-04:00

it was something i didn't say

2009-06-08T17:09:00.004-04:00

i've been busy filing away old emails all afternoon. why? becuase i haven't done it for four years and things are getting kind of rank in the inbox. the work is full of moments to relive, victories savored, crushing defeats dredged up, and confirmation that a few folks out there are really, really not reading for comprehension.

case in point: when i started my little web experiment bowie-a-day, i sent out a short email to folks, telling them about it. rather than crowing LOOK AT ME guys, I MADE A WEB SITE, i thought maybe a subtle, humorous approach was preferable, especially since the site is so simple and frankly kind of trivial. here's what i sent:

Today is a big day. If you're like me, you love to look at pictures of David Bowie personas. I thought, "I wish I could use the power of digital supercomputers to show me a different picture of Bowie every morning, without all that work."

Far out! I discovered that, by carefully typing coded information into the machine, I have released this unknown power.

http://www.bowieaday.com/

Set yourself free. The robot is doing it for you.

i can't tell you really how many confused responses i got, ranging in agression levels from "ummmmm okay" to "why the f**k did you send me this?" what's the moral of the story? maybe i overestimated my ability to deliver subtle messages. i just wanted to share that.

red hook open studios

2009-06-04T11:58:00.007-04:00

sarah palin

2009-05-27T13:28:00.003-04:00

from a center for biological diversity email i received:

It's been a good month for Governor Sarah Palin but a bad one for polar bears. First the NRA awarded her with a handmade .50-caliber assault rifle it said could "easily take down a polar bear," then Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced he would approve a Bush-era exemption of coal-fired power plants, offshore oil drilling, and other greenhouse-gas-emitting projects from federal laws meant to save the polar bear from extinction.

Palin was ecstatic, crowing, "This is a clear victory for Alaska…oil and gas development on the North Slope will not be subject to the consultation requirements of the Endangered Species Act."

3 ozzy guitarists

2009-05-27T08:43:00.004-04:00

memorial day

2009-05-26T11:01:00.017-04:00

...after which we must ask you to resume shopping

2009-05-26T10:45:00.003-04:00

All Americans were asked to pause for a moment of remembrance at 3 p.m. local time Monday "because it is the time when most Americans are enjoying their freedoms on the national holiday," according to the White House Commission on Remembrance.

"The moment does not replace traditional Memorial Day events; rather it is an act of national unity in which all Americans, alone or with family and friends, honor those who died for our freedom," the commission said on its Web site.

"It will help to reclaim Memorial Day as the sacred and noble holiday it was meant to be. In this shared remembrance, we connect as Americans."

The 3 p.m. observances included, among other things, an interruption of Major League Baseball games and the pausing of the Washington Memorial Day Parade.

The National Grocers Association and Food Marketing Institute has asked shoppers to pause in stores across the nation.

link to full article

2009-05-25T12:44:00.001-04:00

ah, summer

2009-05-25T12:24:00.005-04:00

by far, my most idiotic time of year. here's a collaborative piece in the rest room at the gowanus yacht club last night. this is what happens when designers drink beer, i suppose. apologies for chopping off the third name there. i was um, multitasking.

star trek

2009-05-13T11:07:00.011-04:00

i saw the new star trek movie last night.
i'm not going to really review it, and i'm not going to include any spoilers. you already know that the mighty leonard nimoy has a part in the film, and that shatner does not. anyway, i went to see the thing last night. occasionally, if there's a movie K doesn't want to see (which is to say: space movies) i'll ride my bike up to the court street theater in downtown brooklyn and see it myself. i've never been big on talking movies over after seeing them with a group. sure, everyone has an opinion. it's just that, three minutes after the last credit rolls out, i'm usually still trying to enjoy the afterglow of the multimillion-dollar extravaganza, and i'm just not interested in op-ed pieces by my friends. so the solo bike ride to the urbanplex works pretty nicely for me. leaving the theater, i can coast all the way downhill to red hook in the late-spring breezy silence and sort of think the movie over in peace. also, going to a movie alone means that i can buy a great big soda at the concession stand and not have to defend my decision, ha ha.

when i was a kid, the original star trek tv series was already way into syndication. it came on every weekday at 4pm. perfect after school babysitter. i was parked on the floor in front of the sylvania, obsessing daily. i was really into the saturated primary colors and the intense lighting (those eyelights!). it's hard to remember a time when i hadn't seen every episode of the show yet, but that was what was happening. first-grade me was catching up with the older nerds, i guess. i was too young to know about a lot of things, really, but i was sure that i was on schedule to know everything there was to know about outer space.

i don't have much to say about the preceding ten star trek movies. i've seen all of them. the second film was the only very good one, a brief shining moment largely thanks to writer & director nicholas meyer's decision to incorporate an adventure-on-the-high-seas style as well as several symbols that were so strong that they have stuck with me all these years (the eyeglasses, the book, kirk seeing spock's empty chair). everyone else seems to like the fourth one (the one about whales) but it's too silly for my taste. the sixth one wasn't bad, i think probably because meyer returned to direct it.

i want to share a few uncoordinated thoughts about the latest movie.

good: red matter. thank you, filmmakers, for not attempting a tortured explanation of this stuff with big next-generation-era pseudosciencey words. it was red, which was enough to get the point across. they did not resort to calling it a "quadratic temperoplasmic field" or something.

not so good: over-introducing characters. you don't have to tell me that he's "mccoy, leonard mccoy," i'm way ahead of you. and i already figured out that the scottish-talking guy is mister scott. and so on. even casual fans recognize the core characters from the minute they appear on screen (gee, who could the beautiful african-american linguistics expert in the miniskirt be?), and the people who have never seen one second of any star trek don't really need or want a tedious, ta-daaahhhh moment of the character saying his or her own name. i recommend an edit.

possibly ok: lens flares. i cheated a little bit here, because beforehand i had read an article in millimeter magazine where abrams and the cinematographer dan mindel talked about how they flared the lens in like, every shot, and in the CG shots, ILM came up with some sort of super-proprietary lens flare system that looks just like the real flares they shot in-camera. i wish i hadn't read that article. during the movie i was spending way too much time alternately analyzing or ignoring the lens flares and not enough enjoying the movie. i guess the filmmakers used this approach because they were looking for a visual style that an advertising executive might call "ownable" (execrable fake word) as well as a way of stitching together the visuals in an edgier way than, say, the latter-day star wars films, with all of their stately visual precision. they accomplish this, but sometimes it's way over the top. a scene of two people standing in a hallway talking, and there are all these unmotivated lens flares blasting all over the place.

really good: mccoy. karl urban owns every scene he's in. great work, and much-needed comic relief.

i don't mind if they messed with supposedly sacred historical details or altered the continuity of the ten previous films and something like six different tv series. we know where obsession with continuity got george lucas. shaking things up is okay with me.

summer 2008, ninigret, rhode island

2009-04-28T18:27:00.006-04:00

not a valid card

2009-04-27T19:59:00.004-04:00

in the street next to the b61 bus stop, the day after i became involuntarily freelance again.

the man from mars

2009-04-22T10:32:00.005-04:00

the other day tom wolfe walked past me at baggage claim in the us airways terminal at laguardia. on his year-round white suit, from wikipedia:

Wolfe adopted the white suit as a trademark in 1962. He bought his first white suit planning to wear it in the summer in the style of Southern gentleman. The suit he purchased, however, was too heavy in the summer for his tastes and so he wore it in winter instead. He found wearing the suit in the winter created a sensation and adopted it as his trademark. Wolfe has maintained the uniform ever since, sometimes worn with a matching white tie, white homburg hat, and two-tone shoes. Wolfe has said that the outfit disarms the people he observes, making him, in their eyes, "a man from Mars, the man who didn't know anything and was eager to know."
photo: ap via nymag

fun fun fun 'till daddy takes the t-bird away

2009-04-18T11:56:00.002-04:00

sorry about the pic quality. my hand was shaking.

good friday

2009-04-11T13:02:00.005-04:00

6. Demerits are given for various offenses. They may be given singly or several at a time. Accumulation of three demerits during a single school year carries an automatic suspension from the School. Demerits are erased from the student's record at the end of each school year.

good friday always makes me think of good friday 1988, when i accumulated either my first or second demerit for leaving the campus of my boarding school on the one day of the year when absolutely no permission was obtainable to do so - good friday. we hitched a ride from some girls we knew, and headed to burger king, and were quickly apprehended in a low-speed car chase not a mile from the school.

burgers? on good friday?

anyway, i was spared a third demerit and having to "make a go of it over at grover cleveland" upon another (i think earlier) apprehension involving me driving a girl's car off campus. it's fun, how girls and cars will cloud one's judgement.

mcenroe with bodo

2009-04-10T10:21:00.002-04:00

psychedelia, in boston of all places

2009-04-02T10:11:00.007-04:00

one of my short films (neary) will be featured in a video installation in harvard square from april to june, brought to you by lumen eclipse. neary is loosely based on the first movie i really remember seeing in a theater, close encounters of the third kind., a spielberg film that is twelve times better than e.t. the extraterrestrial. i had to re-score the film because i used a brian eno track on the original and of course did not get the eno song licensed.

many thanks to rory at lumen eclipse. i'm excited to be in the same company as pipilotti rist! now can i be in the whitney biennial?

standup

2009-03-26T11:02:00.004-04:00

here, the little one insists on standing up in the sling, versus the more universally accepted sitting position. i'm not sure who took the picture. possibly the butler.

audience with the great one

2009-03-17T10:26:00.004-04:00

longtime pals damijan and monique swung by world headquarters the other day to seek an audience with baby eno. he snapped some great pics and is kind enough to let me link them here. marion one-ups vince neil here by having a tail depicted on her zebra leggings.

old techno by me

2009-03-14T21:23:00.007-04:00

ok, it's not really techno qua techno. but i did make them in a computer, in 1997 and '98. my electronic music name was c60. i named myself after a super-stable carbon molecule that is shaped like a buckminster fuller tensegrity dome, not the sixty-minute cassette. i thought it would be interesting to foist a couple of the tracks upon you.

hoohoohoo.mp3
penang_blunt.mp3
yangchow.mp3

this ain't no mudd club, or cbgb's

2009-03-01T08:33:00.013-05:00

i saw david byrne at radio city music hall last saturday night, the second of two sold-out shows at radio city. dressed entirely in white against a plain black stage, and at a distance almost spectral, whatever that means. maybe it means my eyesight is not so good. anyway, he spoke for a minute or two as people took their seats, joking about the fancy plastic cups that the radio city cocktails come in, and later on about having signed the RC guest book along with historical figures like woody woodpecker (walter lantz?) and liberace, whose signature commanded a full half-page.

he stood right up at the edge of the stage (i kept thinking of the lyric from "girlfriend is better"). the first couple of songs i thought perhaps he was a little flat. i half-wondered if being so far from the stage (we were in the 2nd balcony) created some kind of doppler effect that lowers the pitch at great distances. i know... bad science. the band started with "strange overtones," a song which, during the golden age of record companies, would probably have been considered the single. i'm glad we are entering an era where a teenager may have no idea what a single is.

musically, they concentrated on the new album and on remain in light-era talking heads songs. the idea was to perform songs that he and brian eno had co-created, and so it naturally focussed the effort. he's in strong voice, and while i will always be a little sad that i never saw the talking heads live, i felt glad that the songs sounded as full and energetic as they did without the original crew playing them.

the lighting approach was straightforward and without unnecessary embellishment - sophisticated only in its precise timing (e.g., the drummer gets a quick spotlight during a timbale (?) fill, or a curtain of LEDs in alternating red and blue sometimes animating upstage).

i have always been interested in db as a character who began public life as an awkward, aloof art school intellectual, who soon afterward got funky (cf remain in light), eventually came out the other side tempered, sentimental, and nearly nostalgic ("this must be the place," little creatures, true stories). by the time i became interested in the talking heads (maybe 10th grade) he was already well on his way to this, i don't know, acceptance of his own humanity maybe? regular readers of db's blog will find the author to be a combination of an analytical semi-historian and a practical utopianist (bicycle advocacy, urban preservation). i like to think of him as an inverted william shatner. he's still a little awkward, but it's expected now, and most of us like it because we can relate to it.

there is a bicycle rack in front of my office building, one of several around the city designed by db. ours is in the outline of a guy. i think he must have had them fabricated in red hook, where we live, because once last may i introduced myself to him with a flyer for an open studio tour that we hold in our building every year. first he said, "oh! redHOOK." then he said that he had been doing some sort of metal work in neighborhood recently. i like the idea that the bike rack in front of my work building in chelsea might have been made a few blocks from my apartment. symmetry is satisfying.

about the photo: being unsure of the photo policy at radio city, i decided to leave high-end photo gear at home. i only had a phone and a cheap monocular with me, so i tried to combine the two low-quality items for a kind of downmarket james bond telephoto-phone trick, hence the spooky blown-out and smudged image you see before you. i like that he looks like a leaping demon.

all she's got II & madge's bird

2009-02-09T16:46:00.005-05:00

jradr is asking to see a picture of this amazing and awe-inspring shirt i bought. madge is asking to see a picture of my baby. everyone wins.

giving her all she's got

2009-01-23T19:10:00.002-05:00

Thank you for sharing your thoughts about one of our products! Please focus on the product performance and quality. Your review may be posted on 80sTees.com as well as on Buzzillions.com, a network site that shares reviews with the shopping community.

All She's Got Star Trek T-Shirt

This Star Trek shirt shows Capt. Montgomery Scott informing us of impending danger with the engines of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Scotty would always warn us "I'm Giving Her All She's...

The most useful comments contain specific examples about:

* How you use the product
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it's not really a product complaint as much as a wish that so many tshirts wouldn't look like fat-shirts on me. since i'm tall, i have to get an xl most of the time. i know, i know. i could have worse problems. i just wish tshirts came in "tall" sizes. the design is hysterical on this one though, which is why i bought it. that's the same reason i bought an amazing adam ant shirt from this site. and it, too, was a fat-shirt. maybe the butler can send it out to have it altered to fit me.

sometimes when we touch, the odyssey's too much

2009-01-22T13:07:00.001-05:00

red hook snow adventure

2009-01-19T19:28:00.005-05:00

mommy, daddy and baby are at home this week, which means that daddy is starting to drive everyone crazy with his antics and wild mood swings. it's better if daddy goes for a long, long walk once in a while. today i walked down to the store with an empty backpack and an empty memory card in my trusty 30D. santa gave me a 50mm lens for christmas, which i'm still getting used to, but enjoying nonetheless. here's a set of pics from my walk.

it occurs to me now that on days like this, a holiday, with the snow falling silently on red hook, cars moving in slow motion, i feel mighty lucky to live in this bizarre corner of brooklyn. it's just about right. plus, there's a wig joke in there.

rossini and thugs

2009-01-14T18:57:00.009-05:00

i don't know much about opera. i always felt it was a precursor of three's company for rich 19th century europeans, but what do i know, really? i can learn.

i like this story, which i found in the wikipedia entry for The Barber of Seville. i like the idea of someone who was "well known for his fast work at composition." i also wonder if he was impossible to live with. i suppose i could look that up sometime.

Rossini is well known for his fast work at composition, and true to his style, all the music for Il Barbiere di Siviglia was completed in under three weeks; though the famous overture was actually borrowed from two prior Rossini operas, Aureliano in Palmira and Elisabetta, regina d'Inghilterra. Barbiere's first performance on February 20, 1816 was a disastrous failure: the audience hissed and jeered throughout, and several on-stage accidents occurred. However, many of the audience were supporters of one of Rossini's rivals who played on "mob mentality" to provoke the rest of the audience to dislike the opera. The second performance met with quite a different fate, becoming a roaring success. It is curious to note that the original French play of Le Barbier de Séville endured a similar story, hated at first only to become a hit within a week.

four things that happened

2008-12-12T11:45:00.002-05:00

thanks for the viper II

2008-12-08T12:11:00.003-05:00

I hoped everything arrived as described in my ebay posting. I did leave positive feedback for you, can you do the same for me please? Thanks, M___.
____

hi - yes everything was perfect. my wife and i are expecting a baby any day now so i'm not keeping up with other tasks as well as i might usually :) i'll leave feedback for you today.
cheers,
sean

animal hands

2008-12-03T11:15:00.006-05:00

from my friend and colleague L___ (no relation to the other L___), a new site for the band animal hands. its lean and serene, kinda like L___. i've seen the band play and had a great time - lots of energy & lots of fun. upcoming show this thursday the 11th at the bellhouse in gowanus, 149 7th Street, between 2 & 3rd aves, at 8p.

thanks for the viper

2008-11-18T11:04:00.004-05:00

Hi -

Thanks for the Viper and thanks especially for the found missile. I do remember that there were different versions of the toy - they came out when I was about 7 years old. First I had one of the firing Vipers, and the next Christmas Santa Claus brought a Cylon ship - non-firing and very sad indeed. I'm sure you know this, but the Cylon ship had these pop-out "wings," and when the non-firing missiles were "fired" you couldn't close the wings without pushing the missile back into position. More sadness.

Again, many thanks!
Sean

behind the candidates

2008-10-30T10:25:00.003-04:00

my friend L____ co-created a really nice-looking / -functioning site called behind the candidates. please have a look / tell your friends.

sorry guys + principal photography wraps on "spirit ship"

2008-10-22T10:34:00.009-04:00

i've had no time to make nice blog postings for you. the reason is that i have been working on a short film with kristin (its working title is spirit ship but that is likely to change). info is here. it's about a group of children, perished in a shipwreck but still walking the earth, who manage to make contact with a group of living children. we shot the film in a few locations in red hook. this was our first attempt to do things with a professional crew, and although our inexperience was pretty clear most of the time ("wait, you guys don't have a 2nd AD?" or "green room? whoops") i know that what we were able to capture is going to look and sound so much better once we get into editing. many thanks to all of the people that helped us with our project (more on that later).

mcenroe x4

2008-09-17T10:35:00.011-04:00

presented: extreme crops of macenroe, u.s. open 2008.

spiderman theme recurring in dreams

2008-08-28T11:09:00.006-04:00

for some reason i have been hearing the "spiderman" theme from the 70's kids pbs show "the electric company" in my dreams lately. last night, in my dream, whenever someone new would walk in the room, the theme would play. it was the best.

rhode island adventure

2008-08-27T16:59:00.003-04:00

here's an adventure set from a trip to rhode island last weekend. most of the pics are from narragansett; some of the later ones were taken in the ninigret nature preserve, one of my favorite places in the world. it used to be a military air training base, but now it's mainly creatures.

2 + 1 masetros

2008-08-18T12:00:00.004-04:00

david byrne and brian eno's new album is available now. two massive maestros that i love. they're two of the best things about the 20th century. if you're reading this you already know how i feel about the big D. if you're feeling cheap, they've posted a track for free download, "strange overtones." in the old days, it might have been called the "new single".

my friend M___ likes to remind me that there is a third maestro involved, stefan sagmeister, who designed the packaging and other deluxe things.

old treo pictures part 9

2008-08-06T19:14:00.002-04:00

the f train bridge at smith & 9th streets, the sun blowing some kind of psychedelic cyberhole in my treo.

old treo pictures part 8

2008-08-06T19:10:00.003-04:00

the hurricane in a peaceful moment, riding along in an airplane to tulsa.

old treo pictures part 7

2008-08-06T18:59:00.003-04:00

sort of an outtake from the incredibly boring gold-chocolate-coin-on-the -B61-bus-stop "story". it's nice with the shadow. this takes me back to the times when the bus was still fun. like last year.

old treo pictures part 6

2008-08-06T18:52:00.004-04:00

an office where i worked in february or march.

old treo pictures part 5

2008-08-06T18:45:00.003-04:00

someone in park slope, a little upset as you can imagine. click on it for big.

old treo pictures part 4

2008-08-05T12:29:00.006-04:00

myself, in my pea coat, driving the green bean around the building, looking for a parking place

old treo pictures part 3

2008-08-04T13:40:00.003-04:00

coffey park, red hook, when it looked like narnia one night.

old treo pictures part 2

2008-08-01T16:28:00.004-04:00

old treo pictures part 1

2008-08-01T12:51:00.002-04:00

the hurricane in her lair, january 2008

bill brown and robert mitchum, part one

2008-07-23T11:18:00.008-04:00

this morning i finished reading a book that i am 99% sure was written by my high school friend bill. i haven't really talked to him since 1988, but once, around 2001 or so, i got his phone number and left him a voicemail. he called back and left me a message, and then for some reason i kind of dropped the ball and let it roll for a few years.

lately, i googled him and found that he had published this book, saugus to the sea, and a couple of dvds of short films as well. intrigued, i ordered them, having decided to first catch up with him at a distance through these various media.

the book is great. part of me wants it for sale in every megabookstore in the country. another part of me doesn't want to share it. i don't know if i'm saying that because i know him from long ago, or if it really is a great book. of course it doesn't matter to me really which is true. the other day, reading it at the beach, i wondered how i would feel if this book had been written by some entirely different bill brown; the right age, the same drifting-through-ruined-buildings tendency, being from the same texas city, the gurgling aquifer of ecclesiastical references only a person with long-term exposure to catholicism can make, a high school friend from new york city named mark (i'm at the beach saying aloud, i know that guy too!). i suppose it doesn't ruin it if this turns out not to be our bill. i like being not-sure. let's not get carried away. anyway, of course it's the same bill. it's just that it's too good to be true.

more to follow.

july 4th, winsted adventure

2008-07-08T11:52:00.005-04:00

a new adventure series regarding independence, various fires, and a jukebox party. kbe took a few of these as well.

shelby adventure

2008-06-30T20:18:00.005-04:00

click the pic for black and white adventurosity in shelby, north carolina (and a few in the charlotte airport). many of the pics were made by k.

compression

2008-06-16T15:13:00.005-04:00

i found a bunch of pics in my mobile phone from my sister's wedding. the image quality from my camera phone is so bad that it's kinda good. click here for the rest of the mobile adventure.

discouragement and other possibilities

2008-06-11T22:40:00.011-04:00

i never know what to do when i experience a string of discouraging events. or maybe i never recognize strings of successes, really. at the moment i don't feel good, and i don't feel happy. i'm not trying to attempt an incomplete and abstract list of difficult-to-assimilate things that have happened in recent days. but i do feel more frequently slapped back than ever by my daily experience, despite an intellectual observation that i'm supposed to be doing just fine.

self-censorship. good? i don't know. i can be the king of revision. last weekend my good friend s____ told me she thought i was holding back here in this particular venue. i think she meant that i wasn't telling the whole story, or that i was being disingenuous to a certain extent, possibly guarded. it caught my attention only because she's a perceptive person and has always been kind to me. i don't know what it means yet.

the picture above: in hartford, connecticut, at mayor mike's, april 26th, in the foggy aftermath of dad's generous 60th birthday party. most likely suntory yamazaki in the glass.

japan adventure parts two and three

2008-06-06T17:40:00.008-04:00

japan adventure, parts two and three. click the pics.

japan adventure, part 1

2008-06-01T18:46:00.004-04:00

i have finally had a chance to semi-deal-with a very large quantity of photos from my trip to japan in april. k and i were very honored indeed to attend the wedding of close friend and bandmate masa to his new wife maggie. prior to that, we spent some time in a part of tokyo called ome-shi, working on a new installment of a film we are making with children from around the world. so herewith i present part 1 of the april japan adventure. i should also mention that a few of the pictures were taken by kristin. most of the ones that have me but not her in them, for example.

elvis shake

2008-05-14T14:08:00.005-04:00

today i had an elvis milkshake with lunch. it's made of peanut butter and i forget what else. you can also see the very highly regarded u2 ipod there, and a giant m&m.

anyway, i like to think it was named after elvis costello instead of the other guy.

baby sister got married

2008-05-06T08:26:00.004-04:00

to me seems like a year ago already, but really it has been less than a month that my sister got married. here she is with mike, getting toasted upon. mom on the right, is holding it down with the emcee style.

it was a great wedding. total liz and mike style - not fussy, family and friends having fun, awesome music even though i almost got in a fight with the dj. many thanks to them for hosting such a fun party on that big occasion.

below is a shot of dad cracking everyone up on the mic.

our man in tokyo

2008-04-26T10:04:00.005-04:00

apologies for my long absence. first i was in central florida attending my dear sister's wedding; then in japan, attending my homeboy masa's wedding. we're off to hartford this afternoon for dad's birthday party. i haven't dealt with all the photos yet, just wanted to say i'm alive, well and in posesssion of a large quantity of japanese candies.

tell them i love my shoes

2008-04-16T15:29:00.004-04:00

here's the wall that faces my desk. masa made the moon for our album cover photos. i drew a picture of these slippers that k's mom gave me. the bear was a present from k to keep me happy while i compute.

advice to gentlemen

2008-04-04T12:53:00.004-04:00

okay fellas. here's what i don't want you to say in IM:

OMG
Duh
LOLZ
TTFN

thanks!

celestial person

2008-03-24T10:14:00.003-04:00

yesterday my sister reminded me that i had promised a month ago to plaster this picture of her with her cookie puss the ice cream birthday cake all over the internet. sorry liz! here you go.

what's wrong with new york city?

2008-03-12T10:58:00.001-04:00

from an online review of a hair salon:

I have been going to ____ at _______ since the salon opened! Before that I was flying back to Seattle to get my hair cut because I couldn't find anyone in New York that I trusted!

design and the elastic mind

2008-03-10T15:47:00.006-04:00

museumgoers at rest

on saturday afternoon K and i went up to the MoMA to see design and the elastic mind, an exhibition about which several of my friends have offered somewhat breathless reviews. not particularly planning to be the zagger among all this zigging, i arrived with pen and notebook in hand, and, taking a roughly counter-clockwise route through the exhibition, the following loosely organized thoughts occurred.

there were nano-scale photos evoking my childhood fascination with scanning electron microscopy, but the subjects were manufactured objects (a microscopic torus, and cell-sized alphabet letters which the makers reckon could one day be attached to individual cells to identify them later, like the fish scales in blade runner but even smaller).

with a kind of aimless or coy sweetness, projects in one particular room seemed to be trying to reconcile a mortal loneliness, either imposed by oneself, or by the death of a loved one. it was a mortality room. one project involved converting the biological chemistry of a dead person into stored electricity in the form of a battery. the designers helpfully suggested that the battery could be used to power, for example, a vibrator. this was a little sad and inevitable, possibly just flippant. i probably shouldn't second-guess here too much.

at some point it occurred to me that, yes, people do still believe in the future. i don't mean in the sense that we believe that the future will indeed keep arriving, nor in the sense that one day mankind will live on mars or something, but in the sense that existing technology in the hands of the right people (here meaning tasteful people who know how to choose the right font and color palette, not benevolent government agencies nor enlightened and wealthy cultural arbiters) is capable of creating a future in which we are finally exonerated as the fascinating, viable, forever-young people we already suspect ourselves to be. i saw in the visitors a fascination with watching various kinds of traffic (for example, a mesmerizing application that plotted the progress of a san francisco bay area taxi cab as a zooming point of light surrounded by the swarming of all the other taxis; also offered was a display of outbound new york city mobile phone calls mapped in a kind of color coded system and sorted by destination, so one could see which places were most "popular" to call from which neighborhoods). these kinds of projects are obviously collective mirrors, and the compulsion to recognize statistical aspects of one's own self in a work seems to be an emerging force of 21st century art.

the long-running dream of modern technocracy (as well as its shadowy counterpart technological mysticism) is the promise that you can have it now, which is simply to say that on the day that the distance between our material ideas and our ability to execute them is reduced to somewhere near zero, we will have achieved a core goal of technological progress: the end of labor. some nineteenth century philosophy saw in the unbridled forward lurch of mechanized production the key that would open the door to uninterrupted leisure time for sufficiently industrialized nations. with uninterrupted leisure time, we would all devote our attention to sports and the arts, and many more of us would become great artists. the exhibit showed a project involving sketching a shape in three-dimensional space (extruding a virtual material that looked exactly like shaving cream to me), after which a full-sized prototype (furniture, in this case) is somehow created using a rapid-prototyping technology. (why is it always chairs?) of course, it is clear that this is happening in a kind of workshop in sweden, but the implication is that maybe someday it could be going down in your own home, sketching a custom table, for example, in situ. i cracked myself up imagining this shaving foam as the pervasive twenty-first century aesthetic staple, just as standardized structural steel sections had been in the twentieth.

i found myself staring for many minutes at a beautiful treelike object made from green-illuminated fibers. i wonder if i was desperate for anything that appeared natural. the world is full, i kept thinking to myself. several projects in the show were informed by a kind of techno-naturalism, involving either a projected recreation of plant forms, or an imprisonment of plants in sleekly-designed furniture for the purpose of generating oxygen, evoking a greened-up R2D2. it began to appear that the overwhelming sentiment of the show is that nature, both external and human, is for this array of designers either an inconvenience to be overcome (mortality) or a resource within which we must reconfigure our exploitations to assuage our collective guilt for the previous wave of (industrial-era) exploitation. here i am thinking of a mini-laboratory in which was growing a tiny jacket of "victimless leather" (placed tellingly near an experiment in "self-organizing robotic systems" - for a minute my thoughts turned to skynet, terminators, and visions of sarah connor running into the MoMA and trying to stop judgement day).

near the end of our visit, K pointed out all the many dust bunnies rolling around on the exhibition platforms. dust bunnies! in this mock-up of the near future, there is still dust. i wondered if it was evidence of the many winter coats and sweaters that must have already trudged through this suite of rooms. it was exceptionally crowded, even for a saturday, as if the show's organizers had not anticipated this thirst for confirmation that information is winning, that we will all continue to be interesting and tasteful, and that at least here, in the developed world, everything will be all right.

wednesday morning

2008-03-05T13:01:00.001-05:00

jet is bowie

2008-02-29T19:35:00.009-05:00

i thought the major was a lady suffragette

tell me this lyric from "jet" by paul mccartney and wings is not about david bowie. you know it is. the whole song is. nobody ever talks about this except me. help me out, folks.

the moon

2008-02-26T10:32:00.003-05:00

lunar eclipse! it was cold outside. so i think my pictures might have suffered a little. click it for big.

new things

2008-02-19T09:01:00.004-05:00

spring fever! i started a new photo project yesterday. a couple of months ago, in the hallway of our building, where all manner of good things are found, i spied five rolls of different colored setpapers, the kind used for photography backdrops. they must be nine feet long. excitement! let's take advantage of this rented loft apartment and have nine-foot rolls of paper in our living room. here's a sneak preview of what i'm up to. no, i will not explain further.

how do you vote on the coridan admission?

2008-02-09T09:51:00.000-05:00

elections. strange times indeed. me, i love to vote. i always joke that i wish i could do it a bunch of times instead of just once. i think it's fun. but i'm not sure that everyone thinks it's fun. i find that some people are taking things a little too personally.

if i remember right, when i was a kid, it wasn't considered too cool to ask or really discuss how you voted, unless you were campaigning on a candidate's behalf. or maybe it was just what i learned from my maternal grandmother, who wouldn't discuss her vote in the 1980 election since our dad had been a strong bush supporter in the primary, and a die-hard republican always. i'm pretty certain she voted for jimmy carter, i'm also sure that, as a nine-year-old, i was a pretty obnoxious republican booster.

nowadays, i don't mind telling people who i voted for if they ask, but i do mind being subsequently sized up based on my answer (which is to say, demographicised based on one piece of information). can you not do that to my face? some people need to chill. vote how you want to vote, but don't give me any damned flak about mine, thanks.

more bourne facts

2008-02-04T11:48:00.000-05:00

today, bourne gets on the bus, but only after letting everyone else on before him. a gentleman. later, when it becomes apparent that it will be faster for him to walk to his stop than wait for the bus to get through the traffic on atlantic avenue, he suddenly goes all treadstone on the rear exit and escapes like only he knows how to: short, quick, deft movements informed by extensive training in arnis de mano.

goose man = no drugs needed

2008-01-25T10:46:00.001-05:00

a couple of days ago i stepped out of the C train on my way to work, where i found a man with long bird feathers in his cap, loudly bird-calling in the manner of the canada goose (canadian?), with great realism and enthusiasm. you do not need drugs if you live here.

non-secret window

2008-01-23T10:01:00.000-05:00

this is how it looks like outside my apartment window. i like to imagine jason bourne leaping from roof to roof, chasing the mailman to beat him up for breaking so many of our netflixes. click on it for big.

more bus people suddenly remembered

2008-01-19T20:10:00.000-05:00

the other day i went to work late and there were a few people on the B61 that i forgot to put on the nickname list. i present the omissions here:

malkovich dafoe
gummy
the librarian

probation

2008-01-15T22:28:00.000-05:00

okay, juan carlos I of spain, you're back in the links list. and it's provisional.

the bus is in the house in '08

2008-01-08T10:46:00.000-05:00

back on the B61 yesterday and some of the old favorite bus people were there. very exciting.

future girl
designer michael douglas (he got on at a different bus stop!)
oprah II (she did too!)
jason bourne (looks like he has lost a lot of weight!)
mousie
early smoker
2tone

it's easy to blame the bruce lee jacket

2008-01-07T14:31:00.000-05:00

taking it back to the original concept: the problematic outfit. here you see me rocking the rare bruce lee jacket at a holiday party last year. this is, in fact, the navy blazer from jordan marsh that i wore to high school graduation, much later modified with custom red stitchy business and bruce lee patch. obviously, i'm pretty stoked that it still fits me. everyone goes ape for it. guest star photographer was c. hess, who was also co-responsible for the fine holiday party itself.

It’s Not Wise…

2008-01-06T11:19:00.000-05:00

a bit of the epic jradr lucasfilm haiku cycle slipped through the cracks. mea culpa. here it is:

Ceremony gipp
(a translation from Wookie:)
I get no medal?

jradr is the star wars/indy haiku king

2008-01-03T10:43:00.000-05:00

my good old high school colleague jradr is today's guest star. i present you herewith a selection of his highly effective work. my own favorite is "bad dates and ra's staff". i've taken the liberty of italicizing quotations.

Toshi shopping list:
Bocce books for Aunt Beru;
Power converters.

Flag officer drops:
You've failed me for the last time.
Grey uniform heap.

Short Round, lame sidekick
About Spielberg's trophy wife:
This no time for love!

Jones senior; junior
Share more than love of relics:
I WAS the next man!

Solo Bantha poo-dah:
Slug-hung in-action figure.
Where'd the handcuffs go?

Red, Gold Groups chatter:
Look at the size of that thing!
Stay on Target. Stay---

Bad dates and Ra's staff;
They're digging in the wrong place.
Shiny box of God's.

Do keep your eyes shut:
That's just what the Hebrews thought.
Thanks, Marcus Brody!

Jagged sphere pulses death;
That thing's operational!
You don't say, Lando.

happy birthday to mister eno

2008-01-02T11:44:00.001-05:00

many thanks to guest star ash meer for this pic:

when?

2007-12-31T23:42:00.000-05:00

in the course of holiday travels to visit family from north carolina to georgia to florida, it was my intense displeasure to ride in an airplane three times. one source of amusement, though, is listening to the announcements from airline staff in the terminals and within the planes themselves. i was reminded of a peculiar phrase that they use constantly:

at this time

wherever one might in normal conversation say, now, an airline person will say, at this time. as soon as you become aware of this fact you become overwhelmed by the unreal dadaness of it:

at this time we do ask that you remain in your seats until the captain has turned of the fasten-seat-belts-sign or some such thing.

imagine if i talked to you this way:

me: hey, bill?
you: yes?
me: at this time we do ask you if you are interested
in grabbing some lunch.

thistlepixie blogosphere reentry

2007-12-19T10:51:00.001-05:00

my wife kristin has initated a new blog that focuses on her jewelry and painting work: go there

o fortuna

2007-12-13T10:44:00.000-05:00

great sandy palace
by this steely door he waits:
dae wanna wanga

endangering the misson

2007-12-07T17:24:00.000-05:00

voice from that helmet:
where is that shuttle going?
electrical mask.

what linus the cat looks like these days

2007-12-05T14:11:00.001-05:00

holiday party season is here

2007-12-04T10:47:00.000-05:00

photo by kristin