Monthly Archive for April, 2003

Planning

Plan­ning for an event like Field Day is pret­ty daunt­ing for some­one who has camped less than 5 times in his entire life.

A co-work­er of mine sug­gests buy­ing tents and equip­ment from Build­ing 19, where you can basi­cal­ly find any­thing you nev­er want­ed, so long as it fell off the back of a truck. But that seems a bit stu­pid.

Then there is REI… which has things to make even me drool.

Pres­ley is all into bor­row­ing from friends, which is fine, except it might be nice to own some camp­ing stuff… week­ends on Cape Cod any­one?

So maybe Tar­get is a nice com­pro­mise.

April 30, 2003 » Tags: , . » 1 Comment

Looking at the Work Week Through the Eyes of a Gigolo

When I leave work tonight, I will sub­mit a timesheet that, on sum, will be greater than 90 hours for this week. 90 hours. My co-work­er Akiko will exceed 100 hours.

I know we get paid by the hour, but does­n’t that strike you as a high-tech sweat­shop?

April 19, 2003 » Tags: . » 3 Comments

Furniture Wishlist

West ElmSome­one at work had a West Elm cat­a­log, a fur­ni­ture store in Brook­lyn… and they’ve got real­ly ter­rif­ic stuff. Pret­ty com­pa­ra­ble to IKEA in style and qual­i­ty, but it has more of a Japan­ese mod­ern feel to it.

I think Pres­ley and I should buy a wood head­board for our bed. It’d give her some­thing for her to hang onto…

April 16, 2003 » Tags: . » 2 Comments

Rock’N’Roll MotherFucker

The D4 — Best fuck­ing rock band in the world.

Well, they’re real­ly real­ly good.

April 13, 2003 » Tags: . » Closed

Why I don’t post as much, either

Meg­nut drew up a lit­tle graph to explain why she does­n’t post as much late­ly.

Me too, but I’m try­ing…

April 12, 2003 » Tags: . » 5 Comments

Liz Phair — Teenage Slut?

cliky clickyThe state of pop music is gen­er­al­ly good these days. Rap-Met­al & their Sen­si­tive Pro­gres­sive-Rock Croon­er bud­dies seem to have relaxed their grip on main­stream radio. MTV is play­ing Inter­pol and Zwan, along with Jaras­sic 5 and Eminem… that is, when they’re actu­al­ly play­ing videos.

In addi­tion to the new bands get­ting main­stream atten­tion, it seems to me that sev­er­al artists are mak­ing a come back of sorts. Look at Bil­ly Cor­gan with Zwan… and look at Liz Phair– who is try­ing to shed not only her “blow-job Queen” indie cred from the ear­ly-90s, but also the bor­ing Lilith Fair mom­my rein­car­na­tion of her last album.

Tracks from the new album, post­ed on her web­site, reveal some inter­est­ing tid­bits about her new album.

1) She wants to sell records Despite being an immense­ly tal­ent­ed song-writer and per­former, she’s nev­er sold more than a few hun­dred-thou­sand records. She hired the hit-mak­ers behind Avril Levi­gne Lav­i­gne to pro­duce, and the result is can­dy for the under-17 Avril crowd.

2) She sounds like Avril Levi­gne Lav­i­gne! I have no beef with Avril– she’s fun, cool, and all that. But, Liz was real. She had a fragili­ty to her that remind­ed boys like me of the girl-next-door… She also pos­sessed a unique per­spec­tive on love and rela­tion­ships, which she brought to her song-writ­ing. The new songs are rock­ing, to be sure, but too care­ful­ly processed, so that they sound like just anoth­er L.A. stu­dio job.

(I can’t believe I just used the word ‘fragili­ty’ in a music entry. apolo­gies.)

Still, would I like to hear Liz on main­stream radio, and see her on MTV? Yea. I just wish she’d use some­one like Sheryl Crow as a mod­el, instead of a 17-year old French-Cana­di­an wan­na-be.

April 12, 2003 » Tags: . » 3 Comments

Obstacle 1 & the River Rave

InterpolMTV is pro­mot­ing the new Inter­pol video, which is a bit odd giv­en their usu­al diet of the same 10 shit­ty clips. It’s a ter­rif­i­cal­ly styl­ized video, much like the band and its music. Come to think of it, MTV has done a lot of lit­tle cov­er­age items on Inter­pol, so maybe some­body (Loder? Yago?) rec­og­nized their appeal.

Speak­ing of Inter­pol, Pres­ley, Albany Dan and I are head­ing to the WBCN Riv­er Rave, held this year at the Tweet­er Cen­ter. We usu­al­ly don’t suc­cumb to such over-hyped “mega-con­certs”, but what the hell, it’s out­doors and fea­tures the likes of Inter­pol, Blur, The Don­nas, and Beck.

These artists must love these con­certs– 40 min­utes sets, and you get to meet oth­er cool peo­ple, spend a day in the sun, drink­ing, or what­ev­er. And they charge $75 a tick­et!

April 12, 2003 » Tags: . » 1 Comment

Phone Madness

When I switched to AT&T Wire­less last year, I glad­ly took the free Nokia 3360. It was sim­ple, styl­ish, and free.

It did basic text mes­sag­ing, but no inter­net brows­ing… And, com­pared to all these fan­cy col­or phones with cam­eras, it’s pret­ty stodgy.

I real­ly want some­thing like the Nokia Com­mu­ni­ca­tor, but it’s not avail­able any­where, and it’s $500. So, why not a T‑Mobile Side­kick? Seems pret­ty cool, straight for­ward, and sim­ple. I could text mes­sage, chat, write email, and check my fan­ta­sy base­ball any­where. One prob­lem– it’s T‑Mobile.

Today, I saw that AT&T Wire­less was run­ning a sale on the new Nokia 3650… a wierd look­ing bub­bly-brick of a phone. It has a cam­era, but no key­board. Is it worth get­ting?

April 11, 2003 » Tags: . » 3 Comments

Empty Nest

The week­end is over, we’ve lost an hour, and our apart­ment is emp­ty once more. Hav­ing Macyme & Jere­my, Kun­ta, and Albany Dan under one roof was exhil­a­rat­ing and exhaust­ing.

There was debauch­ery on a grand scale, involv­ing bot­tles and bot­tle of wine, some tru­ly ter­rif­ic thai food cour­tesy Brown Sug­ar, and a bril­liant port­fo­lio show at Mas­sArt of print­mak­ers’ work.

I have a new appre­ci­a­tion for the work of print­mak­ers– I think they occu­py an odd mid­dle­ground between hands-on artists like painters, and those of us inter­est­ed in design. Much of the work remind­ed me of the graph­ic design exhi­bi­tions I’ve attend­ed in the past.

How­ev­er, to hear Jere­my describe using cop­per plates, inks, wood­cuts, and acid, I now realise how phys­i­cal his work is– espe­cial­ly when con­trast­ed with the men­tal nature of my work. It makes me want to get my hands dirty.

UPDATE: An arti­cle in the Boston Pheonix, on the con­frence, which was called “Mak­ing His­to­ries: Rev­o­lu­tion and Rep­re­sen­ta­tion 2003″.

April 7, 2003 » Tags: . » Closed

And now…

It’s fuck­ing snow­ing!

April 5, 2003 » » Closed