post 257. a real, live cubicle.

my very own office. one might make the case that i've got an office at brockport, but in reality i've just got a desk in the legendary mike krickmire's office. at geva theatre center, i've got, like, dividers and my own phone. who cares if there's no window? who cares if the computer is a relic of cold-war russia? it's just like the jeffersons: we're movin' on up.

post 256. finally, someone realizes i'm a dead ringer for spartacus.

nunemaker found a website that finds your celebrity look-a-likes, so he ried out all his friends...

post 255. bell orchestre at the german house.

i've seen a lot of shows in my 32 years, and i can't remember a drummer who knew exactly where his drums fit into songs. these cats -- including members of the arcade fire -- were fascinating, had a song where the aforementioned drummer -- stef -- played an old typewriter, and even covered aphex twin. check them out.

post 254. a cd-r of pictures i forgot existed.

in the summer of 2001 i went to visit eric in nyc, who was, at the time, working at the bronx zoo. i was also there to see living colour's free concert in central park.

my dad painted this. along with a monument to the vietnam war he designed for a small town in louisiana, it's the only public work of art i know of by the g. joanna took this picture after we went to see atb perform at universe, or galaxy, or gotham city, or whatever the name of that club was. has to be 2002. i think.

maurice, from record archive, did this for the archive's website. sweet.

me and the reverend horton heat outside wber. when was this...2003? i think? the next day i went to the nextel cup (then the winston cup) race at the glen with teri. yeah. 2003. i picked up the rev from water street music hall, drove him to wber, interviewed him, then drove him back; on the way i bought him a frappucino. "anything you have to take care of when you get off the tour?" i asked him. "the gutters," he answered. a really nice guy.

post 253. ARTWalk ARTAuction at the armory.

post 252. has something changed? or have i always been wrong?

now, i loves me some compound sentences. and i mean com-pound. so i'm very friendly with semicolons, commas, dashes, and have had a long and loving relationship with parenthesis. but something, over the past few years, has changed my attitude toward the parenthesis. es. parenthesises. parentheses? anyway. i've always, since a wee lad, written like this:

...and now, i've got this talking dinosaur in my back yard (named "henry," no less).

but lately i've noticed that in real people's writing -- such as books and magazines -- my sentence would be structured like this:

...and now, i've got this talking dinosaur in my back yard. (named "henry," no less.)

have i been wrong all these years? or am i simply experiencing some evolution of the written language?

post 251. trying to read like an adult.

i've always been a terrible reader. italo calvino's cosmicomics were, for me, great inspiration because they have a sort-of whiz-bang quality to them. at face value, these fable-esque stories of signs hanging off distant galaxies and jealous primitive life forms forming the first shells were like everything i ever did in college...uh...and today. all flash.

but there is a stark difference between those incriminatingly bad stories i wrote and the delicately crafted works of italo calvino (outside of the obvious parameter known as talent): mr. calvino's stories have something smart people call depth. so in re-reading a few of the stories, i've come to realize that i, in my laziness, never really put a book down after reading it and ask myself, "now, what was that about?" and "how does this book effect my life? does it?" and when writing about time travel and superheroes, i never think, "what am i trying to tell people with this?" i just like the thought of talking dinosaurs.

i was talking to graham of iron cobra last week, who mentioned he was reading mr. calvino's if on a winter's night a traveler; since i wasn't currently reading anything seriously (i had started to reread u2 at the end of the world, one of my favorite books) it got me wanting to return to mr. calvino and see if i couldn't use some smarts and read this like an adult. i'm about a quarter of the way through.

post 250. awesome; i fucking shot that!

i really can't remember why, but i saw beastie boys live several times in the nineties, and i wasn't all too crazy about their live shows. but even with that said, new beastie boys projects always get me excited. one of the few groups out there that has an appreciation, respect, and genuine love for all the music that came before them, these guys really live the life i want to have: the ability to create on their own terms. they're also one of the few bands that gets to operate without pandering to outside forces; like pearl jam, for example, beastie boys seem to be doing their own thing, and having a blast while doing it. lucky bastards.

when awesome; i fucking shot that! started i was a little concerned about the confuse-o-vision editing of all those cameras together; i kept wondering if i could take this were i an epileptic. but the movie's balance of editing and storytelling, the switch between the hand-held fan cams and the "clearly expensive" cams, plus the stage show itself -- wow!

when the stagehands wheel the wedding band set out onto the stage with everyone dressed in nasty tuxes, it's awesome. intergalactic in the audience? mix master mike wreckin' the decks? doug e fresh? ben stiller seen singing along? this movie was great (much more engaging than the neil young movie i saw a few weeks ago; although the case can be made that the two disparate music styles cannot accomodate comparison, i believe that the mr. young's movie could have been better if it wasn't shot in that boring old stock-footage-y way most concert movies are filmed in) and makes me want to try them live again...

post 249. dinner, scott and kyung and zoe, mamasan's.

thanks for dinner, amigos.

post 248. silly, brilliant.