P.S. Page Me Later
September 26, 2006 | Filed Under art, big ideas, found, god bless the internet, mysterious, photo, reading, time travel | Leave a Comment
I found Found Magazine’s website. It’s wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. I wish I still had the amazing note that was left on my car by some Savannah vandals after they wrecked the deer skull I had attached to my bumper. It was hilarious. I can’t remember what it said exactly, but I loved it and I saved it, but it’s vanished by now into the ether. Maybe it’ll turn up again one day and I’ll send it in to Found Mag. Here’s what they’re all about:
We collect found stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids’ homework, to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, doodles- anything that gives a glimpse into someone else’s life. Anything goes.We certainly didn’t invent the idea of found stuff being cool. Every time we visit our friends in other towns, someone’s always got some kind of unbelievable discovered note or photo on their fridge. We decided to make a bunch of projects so that everyone can check out all the strange, hilarious and heartbreaking things people have picked up and passed our way.
You should read the rest of the about page… the note that started it all is pretty great… and then check out some of the finds, complete with brief explanations of the context in which they were discovered.This is my favorite one for today:
Ralph’s NoteFOUND by Jennifer in New York, New YorkI had been playing my music (which can get pretty odd at times) one night in my apartment. The next day, I woke up to a lot of sounds outside my door. I opened my door to see paramedics taking away my neighbor. He had died, apparently during the night.
By the way, we lucky Atlantans can pick up the yearly paper version of the magazine at Criminal Records... Just so you know. I’m gonna be looking for it.God, i love this stuff.
A Chaos of Conscious Forces
September 25, 2006 | Filed Under art, big ideas, found, god bless the internet, mysterious, photo, time travel | Leave a Comment
Listen: I’ve been accumulating a pretty nice collection of bookmarks to various photo and imagery archives around the internets for a while now, with the intention of sharing. There is so much visual treasure just waiting to be looked at, from Soviet-era maps of the U.K. to photos developed from film found in cameras at antique stores and flea markets to hundreds of scans of old illustrations from the turn of the century.[I have to disclaim that I’ve been turned on to a large majority of these collections via Boing Boing, (though I’ve found some on my own,) so if you’re a regular BB reader, I ask you to forgive a little repetition. But I think some of y’all might not have seen this stuff, and I want you to.]So I’m gonna start posting some of these archives regularly.To start: a really nicely designed site about found photos from Buenos Aires.And this:
‘A city is, properly speaking, more poetic even than a countryside, for while Nature is a chaos of unconscious forces, a city is a chaos of conscious ones. The crest of the flower or the pattern of the lichen may or may not be significant symbols. But there is no stone in the street and no brick in the wall that is not actually a deliberate symbol -a message from some man, as much as if it were a telegram or a post-card. The narrowest street possesses, in every crook and twist of its intention, the soul of the man who built it.’
Well put, G.K. Chesterson.By the way, I like the layout of this website. The photos are neatly separated into categories, and you get the thumbnails and the actual photo you’re looking at in the same screen. Everything here is pretty good, but the “pieces” section is especially worth seeing.
Reverse Graffiti
September 13, 2006 | Filed Under art, big ideas, photo | Leave a Comment
Jackpot-aroid
July 14, 2006 | Filed Under big ideas, d'etre, happening, job responsibilities, photo, projects | Leave a Comment
Major score in the Polaroid department - my awesome boss on We Are Marshall remembered that I’m a Polaroid-head and just gave me an entire case of film that was left over in hair/makeup/wardrobe land!We’re talking 30 double packs of instant gratification.that’s 600 pictures just waiting to be called from the ether into existence. So get ready, folks. I’m gonna be wantin’ to take yer picture…
Mountain Menagerie: Bound, Shimmy, Slither
July 14, 2006 | Filed Under fantastic weekend, get outta here, photo, seen | Leave a Comment
For the Fourth of July weekend, a bunch of us drove up to Schmike’s parent’s lakehouse in the mountains. On the way up, we saw a deer bounding across the road and then into a meadow! It was one of those rare moments when, instead of catching a fleeting glimpse of a wild animal, we actually got to watch it for a little while. I mean, it was still pretty fleeting, but it was at least 15 or 20 seconds. It was pretty.
Then, about five minutes later, as we were making our way up the mountain, a driver coming hte opposite direction waved at us to stop. He said, “If y’all want to see something reallly cool, stop at the top of this hill and look to your right - there’s a baby black bear climbing a tree right there! But be careful, ’cause you know where there’s a baby…” and we said, in unison, “There’s a Mama!”Sure enough, as we crested the rise, we saw it, right at eye-level. While we were checking it out though, a car full of Uncle-Sam-hat-wearing 4th of July-ers was trying to get by us, and the road was so narrow that we had to just keep on trucking. So in the span of five minutes in the wild country we had seen a deer and a bear. Naturally, my camera was in my bag in the trunk at the time.Once we arrived at the lakehouse, there was much drinking and eating and singing songs and dancing dances and swimming and eating and shooting off of fireworks. I did take a few pictures of these things. Then on the way back, we saw a snake in the road. (camera was in the trunk.)
big ol’ people
April 28, 2006 | Filed Under art, god bless the internet, mysterious, photo | Leave a Comment
I came across an interesting link the other day on fark; it’s a gallery (in russian haha) for this artist, Ron Mueck. He sculpts hyper-realistic people.. which we’ve all seen before - usually, hyper realism is cool for about five minutes in a gimmicky sort of way, but once the awe over sheer technical skill wears off, this sort of art often loses it’s appeal to me. I would lump this stuff in with photorealism in painting; if it’s so perfect, exact, and dehumanized that it looks just like the original photo, then it might as well be a photo and there’s not much point in making a painting or a sculpture. This guy, however, is making me think twice.Not only are his subjects really interesting characters to begin with, as opposed to a lot of the bland, ‘everyday people’ hyperreal sculpture I’ve seen out there, but he flips the script on you with the scale issue. Some of these people are freaking giants, and some of them are downright gnomey. And when you toss in the mad science this guy has with the realism factor, it’s disconcerting to say the least. I really like this stuff - I bet it’s amazing in person. Here are a few links: the russian gallery, wikipedia, flickr
Good Friday was Wonderful
April 16, 2006 | Filed Under fantastic weekend, friends, music, photo | Leave a Comment
Ian, Bill, Puma and I hosted a cookout in honor of the arrival of springtime this past friday, and The Wonderful decided to seize the opportunity to put on our first-ever show. We figured it would be a low key thing, with just our friends, so we wouldn’t be too nervous.While Ian manned the grill, we set up our gear in the backyard on that weird concrete thing that might have been a chimney foundation or a firepit at one time. We borrowed Puma’s friend Mark’s PA speakers, set up some good ol’ tiki torches, and strategically placed a milk-crate of noisemakers on a blanket in front of the “stage” to allow for audience participation. Once everything was in place, we attempted a semi-successful sound check, then got busy on some beer and burgers.
Soon, magic-hour (eight o’clock,) was upon us, and we started our set. It went surprisingly well, especially considering the fact that Zach didn’t have a monitor and later said that he couldn’t really hear anything we were doing. Evidently, though, no one really noticed. Or at least they were polite and said they didn’t. Either way, we had a good time playing, and I don’t think we effed up very much or very often, and afterwards a few people told me that they liked it, so overall, I’m gonna go ahead and call it a win.After we played, Puma and Jin got up and did a few impromptu numbers, and they sounded great. I had just been wishing (while playing) that I could be in the audience to see and hear what it was like, and then sure enough I got my chance. While they were doing their thing, I have to say that I was really enjoying the moment - still a little dusky but getting dark, a cold beer in hand, friends around, and spring/summer just beginning.That is to say, it was nice. Thanks to all y’all who made it out, and for those who didn’t, we’ll hopefully be scheduling more shows soon. I know we already have one possibly in the works - a house show on saturday the 29th - that we’ll hopefully confirm or deny shortly.
the collector’s item of the night - a genuine setlist, on a post-it, from The Wonderful’s first live performance ever.extra special bonus - a genuine grocery list I had in my pocket which i must admit, had me a little worried for a second when we were about to start playing.Here are a few photos from the evening.update 4/19: the show on the 29th will not be happening - but we’re putting other things in motion. things like magic spells.
Pink Laser Beams
January 10, 2006 | Filed Under d'etre, fantastic weekend, mysterious, photo | 2 Comments
I was awake at dawn this morning, (believe it or not), and happened to snap these photos from my backyard.
It’s always nice when a natural process like a sunrise converges with an artificial (perhaps sinister?) technology like airplane trails and you end up with something this unexpectedly beautiful.
Found Photos
January 9, 2006 | Filed Under art, found, funny haha, god bless the internet, mysterious, photo | Leave a Comment
This website is amazing. It’s like when you find a scrapbook in an antiques store and there are still pictures in it, except the photos are nowadays, and there’s like 30 scrapbooks. Sound like a fantasy? Well, maybe, but it’s for real. Seriously, folks, here’s the story:
“The Found Photos started last year while searching for mp3’s using a filesharing program. I was searching through someones shared file list and saw a folder named ‘pictures’. I downloaded the folder and found 20 or so digital camera pictures of this persons life taking pictures of himself, his friends etc. It made me wonder what else was out there, and after searching for more photos I found hundreds, thousands of them shared to everyone.”
I guess you could argue that websites like flickr are basically the same thing, but the difference is that this guy has weeded through all the truly boring crap and posted the really interestingly boring crap. I love the internet for this kind of stuff. click.
Progress on the Polaroid Front
December 29, 2005 | Filed Under friends, photo, projects, time travel | Leave a Comment
I’ve just scanned and uploaded the latest batch of Polaroids. There are 10 from Korrine’s Christmas party and about 25 from Will’s. I also reversed the order of the set, so now the oldest pictures are at the end and the fresh ones are at the top. Get ‘em while they’re hot.Updated: New Year’s Eve is on there too in a major way.
Every Po Ever Laroided (Thusfar)
December 12, 2005 | Filed Under friends, photo, projects | 2 Comments
well y’all, I’ve finally finished the daunting and slightly illogical task of scanning my entire polaroid collection (to date - the hotel party is at the end of the set) and it’s online for your viewing pleasure. I’ve been a polaroid fanatic for a while now, and my photos go back to about 1999 when I got my camera. of course, since the film is expensive, the subject matter/times depicted tends to progress in leaps. whenever I could afford to buy a pack of film, it would usually be shot up all at once, and then I wouldn’t shoot anything else for a while. so I guess these 374 snapshots probably represent somewhere around 40 or 50 specific days or nights sliced out of the past 6 years. interesting. (to me, at least.) (and probably to some of you, too.) I’m gonna go ahead and say that I’m planning to keep the flickr photoset updated as I shoot more pictures. we’ll see if that really happens. but I did score a bunch of free film from the Toby Keith movie, and my dad says he has some packs of film for me from the FBI storage closet. so i’ve got no excuse to not keep it up. if you see me taking pictures, remind me to keep the ball rollin with the scannin. then everyone can have ‘em, and the world will rejoice and be as one.
haircut
December 3, 2005 | Filed Under d'etre, fantastic weekend, get outta here, photo | 1 Comment
New Orleans Now
December 2, 2005 | Filed Under fantastic weekend, get outta here, good lord, photo, politics, seen | Leave a Comment
Since I’ve been in Baton Rouge for over a week now, I figured it would be inexcusable for me to not visit New Orleans at least once. So the other day, I joined my cousin Lance, his wife Erin, and our Aunt Andree on a trip through the city. Lance is a firefighter, and was involved in the rescue efforts after the hurricane, so he was a perfect guide to show us around. He knew a lot about what happened where, and what has been and is being done to recover. We all took a lot of pictures, and I’ll be updating my flickr page with theirs when I get them. So far, you can at least check out my photos.One thing that struck me was the sensation that some areas were not as bad as I thought, even to the point of seeming completely normal, and then other areas were absolutely as bad as you can imagine. 
The change was often a matter of turning a corner or crossing a block. For example, the French Quarter, fortunately, is on pretty high ground, so those old, dilapidated restaurants, bars, and shops that have been built upon older buildings that were built upon even older buildings are all still standing and functional. The electricity there was restored pretty quickly, and there are street vendors, tourists, and jazz musicians on the corners. The only noticeable change in the Quarter is that it’s less crowded and there were a lot of hurricane katrina t-shirts for sale.The next thing you know, you’re practically in a third world country. As soon as you get out of the Quarter, there’s no electricity, so all the intersections have temporary stop signs set up. There are gigantic piles of trash and rubble lining the streets. Dishwashers, refrigerators, & washers and dryers are lined up, outside, broken. One fridge had a graffiti message spraypainted on the door: “Do Not Open!” There were literally hundreds of abandoned cars, suvs, and trucks. Doors and trunks were wide open and windows were broken. Most of them were covered with a grayish white film leftover from the floodwater.
As we drove through the neighborhoods, we kept noticing the brown stain on garages, trees, and sides of houses where the waterline had been. Lance was especially aware of the fact that we were driving in places that were underwater a month and a half ago; he had seen the same neighborhoods from 6 to 10 feet higher in his boat, and he said everything seemed different from the “normal” angle.
There are signs everywhere you look, many handmade, for practically any kind of service that people in this situation would need. One said: “Computer flooded? We can retrieve your files.” Another was for restoration of damaged photographs. Lots were advertising “home-gutting” and “de-molding”. It was surreal to know that this is basically the only economy in New Orleans right now.With the exception of the Quarter, just about all the “standard” businesses are closed, but we did find some nice suprises. Lance and Erin’s favorite hole-in-the-wall Italian joint was up and running, so we had a great lunch, and there were some entrepreneurial-minded folks who had bare bones tent shops: like the barber cutting hair in a closed Shell station parking lot. Those people are mainly catering to FEMA and Red Cross employees, though. Other than relief workers, there are not many people around; it really feels like a ghost town, especially in the neighborhoods, where block after block is basically uninhabitable.Now that the water is gone, there’s a sense that the urgency and the emergency is over. But it’s painfully obvious when you walk or drive around that the job of making New Orleans liveable, much less a nice place to be, is going to take a long, long, long-ass time. here’s the link to the flickr jive.