My girl and I have pretty consistently been into this stuff called "lightpainting". It involves a camera, long exposures, and bright lights. We've done some great things with it, and it looks like some folks are starting to take notice. 2 random blogs have discovered us via google and featured us along other "lightwriters". I'm proud because we didn't solicit these people, they found us, so we must be doing something right. Check out the 2 articles. We are M::R::I.
As my 4th grade teacher used to say, "I'm bustin'" over here. I'm really proud, and now I am extra inspired to grab my girl, a camera, a few lights, and get out there. We have a long way to go compared to those other guys.
1) I finally got to play the building! It was awesome, and instead of just whacking the keys around, I took a noisier approach and tried to split ear drums. I did not succeed.
2) His album with Brian Eno just came out, and so far it's great. It is unsurprisingly positive and upbeat. The sounds are clean, and thematically, it makes me excited for old age and a beautiful home with a beautiful woman in the country.
You can stream it right here in this handy dandy player Dave and Brian made.
Thats all I got for now. In a few, I'm going to get beers with some old high school friends. Last time we did this, we easily devolved into the argumentative 16 year olds we've always been. I can't wait.
So in an attempt to "live blog" something for the first time ever, I sent text messages to my email during the first day of all points west. Nothing good came of it, this is far from "live", but I am posting them here unabridged anyway, with editors notes.
8/8/08 2:29 pm Weird crowd hip and dirty. Art project everywhere cross promotion. Girl talk [I meant Go! Team] on first on main stage. No one is ready. I feel sorry for them.
2:41 pm Go team guitars too loud. Fun to watch though. They switch instruments. ninja has bigger booty than previously understood.
2:46 pm Ninja raps like three eleven down.
3:29 pm Dolab [The "Rave" Area] makes me glad i was only a raves [That's botched T-9 speak for "Raver"] once.
3:57 pm Forro in the Dark is fucking amazing when you are sitting in the beer tent talking about hilarious tattoos.
4:13 pm The pegge [reggae] in my blood stood up and made it hard to hate michael franti. Note: This was only in passing, save the angry for your Battlestar Forums.
4:25 pm Lots of dragon flies here.
6:22 pm CSS has girls. Crowd of dudes gets three boners each.
6:40 pm Born Slippy has been in my life longer than Feed The Animals.
Underworld - Born Slippy Parts 1 and 2. 1, as I realized they started playing it and power walked over. 2, as I stood, drooling and sunburned.
Girl Talk - 1 and 2. He threw on A Milli for Clinth, the lovely Spanish gentleman in the second video. Yup, that's my roommate. Yup, I know "ethnic" people.
Then I got bored and stopped texting. I filmed TONS of shit, so here is what I got from the first day.
Somewhere in there I filmed The New Pornographers making a reference to "Strange Brew" that no one got. Then I call their singer a "hoser". Then they make fun of the crowd for being all dudes. Then they play a song.
Ooh and here they are covering "Don't Bring Me Down" by ELO. Filmed from the beer tent, and only for six seconds. It was a great cover though.
I also grabbed some video of Mates of State for my girlfriend and I was pleasantly surprised. No snarkiness here, just decent music.
Then the batteries on my camera died. Don't worry (if you were worrying) I did get a chance to "film" radiohead the second night, but we are a looooonnnng way from posting that shit. Timeliness? Psssshhhhh.
I've been oddly drawn to this image and band lately.
Alright, so it's time for an update. I'm hoping I can turn in something coherent here, but this might slip away from me as quickly as I type it. I'm starting backwards. This will be a long, exhaustive post about basically nothing.
It has been a damn long time since I posted anything aggressively "personal" here. The only reason for this is that the persona I had built here became a little too much for me to handle. Amazingly pretentious, right? That my stories of drinking and stepping on land mines somehow became a persona for me? 4 people read this thing. Seriously, 4 people faithfully followed my misdeeds.
Wow, it is tough to write here, I am way out of practice. Fuck it, instead of clawing for some profound lead-in, I'm just going to start. Backwards.
Last night I spent most of the night in Corona, Queens with my roommates massive Bolivian family. They live about an hour away from me, and being Bolivian, they party late. That Kat Williams bit where he talks about partying with Spanish people for three months comes to mind.
So every time we go out there, we're there until 12:30am at least. After a long and busy weekend, I wasn't too thrilled about giving up a night that could otherwise be spent sprawled on the couch watching obscure Russian science fiction with my girlfriend. So I was crabby as hell as I was in Toys R Us spending five bucks on Hannah Montana future-garage sale fodder for my roommate's niece (her bday was the reason we were celebrating, though we've partied for less than that).
So I was crabby and I was taking it out on my poor girlfriend. I was pissed that I needed to go to Toys R Us, and I was even more pissed that we had to buy wrapping paper, a la Larry David. I went to get the Hannah Montana crap, she went to get the wrapping paper.
I came out of the store fuming, hating the hot sun, hating my life, wanting to abort Billy Ray Cyrus and the Jonas' Mother before they could wreak any more havoc on my life. I turned the corner to see my girlfriend, wearing a ridiculously oversized party hat and a huge grin. My anger thinned, but she knew the hilarious hat wouldn't be enough, so she assaults me with silly string. My anger dissolved, and I adored her more than I ever have in my entire life.
After that, the night had its ups and downs, but it peaked right then and there. I was lifted from my funk, and I was able to hang out until the wee hours with my surrogate family.
I tell this story for no real reason other than to illustrate the fact that this is the direction I am heading. I have someone who is willing to spend 4.99 at a party store in Queens just to cheer me up, and that's fucking awesome. I can't wait to do the same for her.
Moving backwards, I saw the Gonzo documentary the night before that.
It was pretty damn great, and it made me feel even better about the tattoo on my right forearm. The Gonzo symbol did in fact represent something more concrete than I ever thought it did. Hunter Thompson was so consistently insane that he was able to hammer his madness into form with nothing more than a typewriter and a vivid imagination. I think he did what we all try to do. To take our personal insanity and turn it into something real. The difference is that most of use our inherent madness as propulsion through more traditional territory. He was mad at the edges, and instead of concealing his madness deep in the gears of the machine, he just let it consume him. He made the territory. He was the raw nerve, and as he became more and more notable, the person at his core became less and less, until he ended it all with a gun in his mouth at the age of 67.
"No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax — This won't hurt" -His suicide note.
I had a few problems with the film though. It was extremely traditional, and all the talking heads (Jan Wenner, Pat Buchanan, George McGovern) were cool, but it was better to just see him speak and act. I realize the film sought to build the legend, but when it was simply illustrative (I really want to see this now), I found myself enjoying it more. It's not really for die-hards, but more of a highlight reel of his better moments.
His suicide was also painted by a few people close to him as a cowardly act. They were mad at him, and thought it was the least noble thing he could have done.
Oh yeah, this too... Maybe I should make a separate post for this, because its awesome... Anyway, a few months ago, Miles, Ant and I had a brilliant plan to spend a day in drinking preparation for a 4 am Dan Deacon concert. With my new video camera, we documented our whole decline from 3 guys hungover at 3 pm to 3 crowd surfing madmen at 4 am. It was a hilarious fucking day, and the videos are great, although they are probably only funny to us. The videos are at my youtube channel, under "Best Day Ever". Check them out.
So at about 2 am that night, after getting separated from Miles, we found him near the only bar at the "venue" (the bizarre winter gardens at the World Financial Center). After Miles yelling at me for my phone dying (belligerence was our common tongue by that point) we calm down and get to the reunion drinking. As we're hanging out, Ant gets to gabbing like an old woman with a broken hearing aid (as usual). He starts talking about pit bull baby rape, Marni Stern (who was performing that same night) and how "dope" she is. Then, hilarity ensues...check the video at 1:26 in.
You can't WRITE timing like that. I actually think the funniest part is that Miles immediately hits on her but that's neither here nor there.
So I promised Ant I would post about that video because he told me he wants to maintain his "internet anonymity". However, he doesn't deserve anonymity, and that video is funny as fuck, so I am blowing up his spot. I think I am going to make a separate post. His account of the event is great too.
After that, we made Marni late for her performance, the night continued to be hilarious, and we finally saw Dan Deacon. It was everything we hoped it would be:
Yes, that's me yelling "Damnit Cohagon give these people air!!!"
I also got captured by the Hipsterazzi. Mom, your little boy finally made something of himself.
Alright, thats all I got for now. I haven't written of my adventures for a while, because I have (purportedly) been taking my life in a less self-indulgent direction. Which is great in theory, but in practice, this is who I am, and its more of a crime to deny that, than to just let it go free.
Also, I need to be better with my documentation, because as time and brain cells pass by, it will be these accounts that entertain me in the Convalescent home...shittin' in a bag.
