W Mt Ida.

Rory;s Dad's house.

Hpppy Hloidyas

Merry Christmas

"Make a Top Ten list and post to your blog on Friday."

Music has certainly changed for me over the years, more than anything with the advent of the iPod, the listening experience in particular has changed. I no longer (generally speaking) listen to an album continuously, all the way through, and value it as such- it doesn't "stop where you left off" anymore. If it hasn't happened yet, this will certainly have an effect the listening public in adverse ways. We will push more into a society of "singles," that is to say, we will more often than not, only listen to certain songs of an artist before we start yawning and change the music. The artists will have to try ever harder to keep us listening to their music as they intended it to be heard, in the order presented on the album. With the ever expanding space on an iPod, the choices are greater and the switching from one album to the next has never been easier. With all the endless free music swapping going on, the bands won't be able to depend on the money once earned from album sales and radio play; they will have to raise concert ticket prices in order to place a higher value on the "live music experience" while at the same time putting more money in their pockets. Or they could always whore themselves out to commercials, products, etc... because rock stars have to be rich right? All in all, I can imagine it being very tough to be in the music industry right now. People are growing more and more fickle with their tastes. P Diddy and Pharrell are both uber rich, high profile "artists" and both dropped albums this year that bombed.
The year in music for me has been pretty unremarkable but here is a short list of some highlights for me. Please keep in mind that music has really not been as impressive to me this year as it has in the past, but if I had to list them, this is what my top albums of the year would look like today...

1. Cat Power-The Greatest (superbly sublime, deep, contemplative)
2. Bob Dylan- Modern Times (amazing, still)
3. The Shins- Wincing the Night Away (because I’ve had it pre-release for over a month now, it is included in this list!)
4. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah- self titled (seems old now, but still good tunes)
6. The Raconteurs- Broken Boy Soldiers (grew on me pretty fast after bad first impression)
7. Bonnie “Prince” Billy- The Letting Go (slow, solid, goodness)
8. Justin Timberlake-Futuresex/Lovesounds (not as bad as it sounds!)
8. Richard Ashcroft- Keys to the World (even his bad is "decent" to my ears)
10. Wolfmother- self titled (I know of no other "number 10")

Other (perhaps) notable releases in 06...
Yeah Yeah Yeah's- Show your bones
Eagles of Death Metal-Death by sexy
Thom Yorke-The Eraser (I want "The Bends" Radiohead back!)

Other notable albums for me this year have included: Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska and Born to Run, The Rolling Stones Exile on Main St., Jeremy Enigk's World Waits, Jimmy Reed at Carnegie Hall, Spoon's Gimme Fiction, Whiskeytown's Faithless Street, Miles Davis's Bitches Brew, and probably a number of other 'single' tracks!

"to make worse"

a pleasant surprise.

Yesterday, I recieved a Christmas gift in the mail from someone I didn't imagine buying me a gift! Thanks Brian!
A Wacom Tablet!


"Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious." _Saint Thomas Aquinas

The man for the job.

I've been convinced. However, it is with great pain that I think that because he is black, he has a very unlikely chance of winning the presidency in 2008, should he decide to run. The Bush re-election made me lose all hope in the general intelligence and good reason of the American public. We live in an ignorant and arrogant country that is afraid of any real change.

I can only hope to be proven wrong.

red reflections

bent squares

Set adrift on a memory bliss

These things happen.

How many times yesterday did someone in New York City hear a CD skip and say, "Oh shit, the remix!"
How many people in Annapolis skated inside a housed dwelling in the last week?
How many people in San Francisco got dumped by a long time lover this past weekend?
How many people in Norfolk said some variation of the work "fuck" in front of their child?
How many people in San Diego saved a piece of already chewed gum, on the side of their plate, for after their meal?
How many tires blew out on the New Jersey turnpike last Sunday evening?
How many people in DC yesterday said the two words, "Barack Obama" together?
How many people in Winston-Salem smoked a cigarette for the first time today, only to become addicted for a lifetime?

I don't know the answers to these questions, I just know that these things happened. I woke up to frost on my windshiled this morning.

Trespassing citation

Today, whilst pushing around my skateboard on a carefree Sunday with some friends, the fuzz finally caught up with us. At first the lady was a super bitch, and then her homie on the force rolled up and he was pretty cool so she started opening up, talking about her son, and how he skates, blahblahblah. She still wrote us official citations for "Trespassing" and banned us from ever going on Norfolk State University campus without first contacting the police chief of Norfolk(!?!) Otherwise we could get "taken downtown." She said the only reason she was writing us up was that it was her "going home time." Why bother then, right? Go home lady! The guy went around and took each of our pictures individually. The whole thing seems so ridiculous, when you think about the situation- don't be all happy-happy joy-joy with us, tell stories about your kids, talk about the local skatepark and then proceed to write us up for trespassing, when you could just let us go with a warning!? (I guess I played along with it though) Assholes.

fair trade/organic

You know your coffee beans are, like, totally organic when you find a rock in them!

"Chugzilla"

Okay, so the clip below is totally funny to me; two "computer-heads" drinking brews, going over rumors/facts(???) about the new Apple phone specs. This was on Lifehacker today, but I really wanted to re-post here, so deal with it. I guess the dude on the right, with the hat on, is Kevin Rose, founder of www.digg.com

Watch for yourself.

Greed

Oh America! Just look what we've become! It's such a sad state of affairs these days, and I can only imagine it getting worse, that is, the rich getting richer and the rest of us feeling even more insecure about the burgeoning wealth of the the uber-rich.

Doogie

I feel like I need to write more here, in place of compudoodles and picturefaces. The trouble comes with what I have to say, or more aptly, the lack thereof. As I write this I think of Doogie Howser, the letters being typed slowly, the true (pre-Internet) blogger, when a blog was a more of a personal history, a diary.

I suppose I could write about my like and dislikes and what I am doing and not doing. I like being married and I enjoy the changing of the seasons. I dislike the amount of sleep I appear to be needing these days to function at 100%. I wish I didn’t have to sleep at all and that I would feel no abnormality or impairment without it. I have been trying to turn the casual imbibing of spirits into “all out partytime” whether it is appropriate or not (I paid the price yesterday morning). I have not been skateboarding. I did a few “spin tricks” yesterday afternoon, but due, in part to a recent ankle tweak and in part, to nowhere inspirational to perform the tricks of the trade, I have essentially given up on skateboarding right now. As a good friend of mine put so succinctly, “Norfolk is where skateboarding comes to die.” I’m better off without it right now.

unstill thoughts

RV Roadtrip YouTubed'

Devin, said it best in his latest Myspace bulletin:

"PMA and 29 elected 4 representatives each to pile into an RV act like frat boys and skateboard. They brought a shitty video camera. This is what was recovered."

raining yellow

goodbye fall,

hello winter.

yelower

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Chapter 8: The Felicity of Virtue

"It is impossible to live the pleasant life without also living sensibly, nobly and justly, and it is impossible to live sensibly, nobly and justly without living pleasantly" -Epicurus

"Set your heart on doing good. Do it over and over again, and you will be filled with joy. A fool is happy until his mischief turns against him. And a good man must suffer until his goodness flowers. -Buddha

_As ripped from the pages of The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt. This book is one of the best that I have read on thePositive Psychology movement/research/area of interest.


Here's an old podcast that was super awesome, that some of you may have heard before. (blahblahblah, shameless self-interest plug...)

Lily Lin won!

So yesterday, as I was trolling through endless web art, I came across a really cool Graphic Design tournament held last Saturday in San Francisco. It's called the "Cut & Paste Design Contest" and it is a live art event in which people are given a pre selected topic to create something of using computers. They each have 15 minutes and must start from scratch in front of a live audience. There were 3 rounds in this event, the topics were "Deja Vu, Lost in Translation and One Too Many."

See video footage of the contest here.

Lily Lin won, and her final piece, for "one too many" was this one...

Man, I miss San Francisco!

i got a wife

More pictures of fun

So, Kevtron has posted 200 pictures on his new blog over here if anyone is interested in high resolution documentation of our trip last weekend (he has one of these). From the pictures it probably appears that there is nothing but drunken debauchery, which is partly undeniable, but you must keep in mind you only get as drunk as you want to. Somehow I managed not to do one beer bong! (I never could do them anyway, so it worked out nicely).
Here is a diagram of what we travelled in.

Historic avenue

opinionesque

An unbelievable 72 hour skate/party

The PMA guys surprised us with a keg of Bud Light in the shower (is that legal?) It provided refreshment for almost the entire trip.

70mph topless beer bongs! (no homo)

ships set sail

So, later on today I will board a 28 ft vessel similiar to the one pictured, with a total of 8 bros (some of which I barely know) in search of a good time. The mission at hand is "pure fun with skateboards and beer bongs." We shall traverse trails unknown and explore the roads of freedom America let it ring. I imagine it will be a well documented adventure with the many "cameraman" and "life aficionados"on board. DC to Charlottesville/Harrisonburg to Pittsburgh. Stormy seas might cause us to re-route but our plans will not be run aground by the Gods of seasonal winds and rains. Ay ayi. arghhahd!

Nightlife

Austin has a bustling night life scene, as one of the highest concentration of bars, per capita in the US.


It has many other things to offer as well...

Romulo Maccio @ the Blanton

Mick at the Art on 5th Warhol Exhibit.

Touchdown
:( all good things come to an end.