For a Good Time, Call

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Ventilated

I got the pictures of Shaving Day from Amelia. So if you're interested in seeing the bad haircut I paid for, the middling phase and the buzzed results, they're available for your perusal (flickr).

Linkology: 06.15.06

* $11 super-wide angle lens for digital cameras, built from a peephole
* I wish shows like "Yo, Gabba, Gabba" were on during my formative years
* Old Jack Black interview (YouTube)
* Grape stomping turns sour
* Shutterbug follies
* A man records his attempt to cancel an AOL subscription
* Japanese door of the future
* NES controller cellphone mod

Gone + Forgotten

Blogger is always down for maintenance. It just swallowed a post about my near concussion. Salutations circling stars and birdies, this mortal coils 'bout to get shuffled loose.

Silent Auction

Last Friday, Claire, Khalida and I went to a silent auction/beer bash in Williamsburg. A third of the proceeds went to Printed Matters, a non-profit dedicated to the promotion of publications made by artists. And the beer was free too! So we sipped and stared and gabbed and threw down bids. I won the piece I was bidding on (below). It's a digital illustration with a very manga feel. I will hang it in the loo of a future apartment and in the bedroom of a future child. Lessons for the night: buying original pieces is always fun, free beer tastes better than $5 beer and my generation is full of shallow, hipster trash.

While in the line, the drunk girls in front of me were making a pact to "pee and only pee" so that the wait wasn't overly long. One turned to me and asked how often I shit. I responded, barely masking my contempt, that presuming my diet was above board, I shit 2-3 times a day. She said "Oh" and turned away as if to say I'd let the conversational volley fall. "Eat shit, scatbrains!" That's what I should've said. Live and learn, I guess. I did take comfort in the idea that, presuming she continues down this path, chatting up strangers about poop and the like while visibly intoxicated, she's probably gonna end up a lampshade in some stockbroker's murder dungeon. Every party has a silver lining.

Irony on the Horizon

I got the digital proofs (below, sorta) back from the printer today. You know what that means? "Racism Is Gay" will be shipping by the end of next week. Tits!

Linkology: 06.12.06

* Trade your CDs for $1
* New MacBook corrosion
* B'c if you're like me, you're porking out
* The George W. Bush approval map
* The Internet's landfill alternative
* I wanna make a mudball

The Express Line Smells Like Ass

I can only assume that the good people at Whole Foods choose to wind the lines for checkout by the cheese tables and olive bars b'c the bathrooms, overflowing with shit reek, are currently occupied.

Extra! Extra! Elite Nerd Needs Your Support!

Nerd Elite reader and all around swell, crafty gal Linda Permann sent me the following e-mail so I thought I would share it with you lot:

Dear friends,
As many of you know, I've been slaving away on a brand! new! craft magazine called Adorn for the past six months. It has finally come to fruition and will be on shelves Tuesday, June 13! Check out a preview here & keep up with the blog here.

And, a roundup of interviews with yours truly (podcast forthcoming...stay tuned!):
http://homeofthesampler.com/interviews/
http://getcrafty.com/blogs.php?user=West%20Coast%20Crafty&entry=6945
http://whipup.net/2006/06/10/coming-soon-to-a-newsstand-near-you

Adorn will be available at Joann, Hancock Fabrics, Michaels, Barnes and Noble, Books a Million, etc. Please tell all of your crafty friends to grab a copy, or better yet, subscribe!. And, let me know what you think of it! If you're in the NY area, be sure to stop by Renegade Craft Fair this weekend (www.renegadecraftfair.com). I'll be making the rounds on Saturday.

Cheers,
Linda

So go out and buy a copy, ya bums...

Beautiful and Isolate

The weather outside is wonderful. The nights of late have been in the 50s which is why I like NY more than TX. Today I'm going to walk to the comic store, walk to the park, sit in the living room, nap in the living room, write with the laptop, utilize the many splendors of pen and paper, listen to Cloud Cult and try to feel good about myself.

Listen: Spank Rock

Hip-Hop has been around for more than 25 years and so it would seem that, like rock and roll before it, rap music is currently stymied in it’s disco period, bereft of innovation and guilty of fan-pandering. I haven’t found much to excite me about the genre-at-large since high school when, like all boys with bad taste, I was a fan of party anthems and shiny-suited MCs. But like the break beats that give a bangin’ track its backbone, to find the good shit you gotta dig.

YoYoYoYoYo is the debut album from Spank Rock, a Baltimore-area group with beats by Armani XXXChange and rhymes from MC Naeem Juwan. What’s most refreshing about Spank Rock is that it doesn’t follow any template. There are few guest MCs and producers on the album, which gives XXXChange a chance to infuse each song with a megaton of Baltimore Club bass and computerized clicks and whistles.

Fewer guests also mean that Juwan gets more mic time to wax on about a few of his favorite things: ass and pussy. “Backyard Betty” has a bridge near the end where he just spits “I’d tap the ho” again and again over some syncopated drums. The lyrics can be unsettling (“Ass-shaking competition champ / Ooh, that pussy gets damp”) but the music carries with it a distinct sense of playful absurdity (“Coke and wet, bitch / Guns, nigga, holla”), making me feel stodgy for taking the words too seriously. This is party music so get over it. And while a song like “Rick Rubin” isn’t exactly hip-hop’s answer to punk, signaling the death of stale, forgettable singles, at least it’s a good excuse to grind your ass.

Spank Rock - "Backyard Betty" (mp3)
Spank Rock - "Coke & Wet" (mp3)
Spank Rock - "Rick Rubin" (mp3)
Spank Rock - "Bump" (mp3)

Steven: There is one track with a chick. But she’s just rapping about her own pussy.
Shavonne: Why doesn’t she sing about “Backyard Bobby”?
Steven: I dunno. “Oooh, he gotta big ol’ dick.”
Shavonne: HA HA HA HA Sing it again.
Steven: No.

Photographic Proof

Claire, Kal and Amelia had a housewarming last night (flickr). The unpacking isn't complete but that should stand between you and wine, that's what I say. The apartment is quite lovely, the best bits being two over-sized living rooms. TWO! I've also uploaded some pictures from Claire and Shavonne's graduation (flickr). Those are overdue but whaddaya gonna do. Shaved head pics to come, promise.

Listen: Islands and The Unicorns

Exchanging mix tapes can be fun, especially when it’s with someone other than a girl that makes your pants go all squishy. My friend Rapp* burned a couple of discs for me a few years back as his way of saying that he liked me. Not like-like, but I was still aces in his book. The discs, which I still spin on a regular basis, were packed with all sorts of undiscovered gems like The Unicorns’ album Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone? hands-down the creamiest of the dreamiest, with its playful noodling and discordant dorkiness. The Unicorns at their best created pop music that was simultaneously obnoxious and blissful, run through with the sensibility of a boyhood spent playing with My Little Ponies and drawing swords and rainbows on notebook covers. But then the band split, with little explanation, just as they were on the cusp of somethingness.

Enter Islands, a 7-piece band raised from The Unicorns sparkling ash with two of the former bands members along for the ride. Islands’ Return to the Sea cleans up some of The Unicorns rough edges, making the whole affair easier to swallow. Both outfits seem to have their inspiration planted firmly in an 8-bit nostalgia with most of the albums flourish sounding like the soundtrack to the greatest NES game you never played. Below are some personal favorites from both bands. Dancing and smiles are strongly encouraged.

The Islands - "Don't Call Me Whitney, Bobby" (mp3)
The Islands - "Rough Gem" (mp3)
The Unicorns - "I Was Born (A Unicorn)" (mp3)
The Unicorns - "Tuff Ghost" (mp3)

*Rapp? You still in TX? E-mail me, sucka!

Down? Sure. Out? Why the Hell Not!

The site was down for the greater part of yesterday. It's terribly distressing when my web presence isn't available for perusal, neglected as it may be. I gotta get a new host real fucking soon. It may seem extreme on my part to expect a flawless performance from a server, but it's not considering there are an endless number of hosts out there that can promise perfection, along with more space and bandwidth for less ching-ching.

Expect hiccups in the future as I move onto greener pastures.

Buttons: One More For Good Measure

You're a fabulous bit of glam and trash. Keep on sparkling until you drop.

Buttons: Back At It

Here are some more designs. Ladies, never let it be said I didn't have in your back in matters of style.

Procedural

I'm ten posts shy of the 50-post mark with this "temporary fill-in" Blogger solution. Shock! Horror! Time to get off my duff and rectify my master plan of shiny e-domination.

That aside, I think this evening I'll try to resurrect the "Listening" feature from blog days of yore. I consume a lot of new music, but every once and a while I go on a binge. This weekend I downloaded 13 new albums, varying from good to great. And I'm itching to share, so batten down the snatches, here comes the tuneami.

Japan Wins!

"Fuck Everything, We're Doing Five Blades"

Mental Link

This morning, I was thinking about my new 'do and I IM'd Jacob. In middle school, he used to buzz his hair all the time:

[10:02] Steven: dude
[10:02] Steven: Remember middle school
[10:02] Steven: when you used to shave your head
[10:02] Jacob: OMG
[10:02] Jacob: OMG
[10:02] Jacob: OMG
[10:02] Jacob: GET OUT OF MY FIUCKING HEAD
[10:03] Jacob: NOW
[10:03] Steven: wah?
[10:03] Jacob: I just shaved it
[10:03] Jacob: JUST DID IT
[10:03] Steven: NUH UH
[10:03] Steven: ME TOO
[10:03] Steven: LAST NITE
[10:03] Jacob: WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
[10:03] Steven: WOOOAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
[10:03] Jacob: separated by thousands of miles...linked by the mind
[10:03] Steven: fuck yeah
[10:03] Jacob: ill take a pic
[10:03] Jacob: today
[10:03] Jacob: and send
[10:03] Steven: bad ass

Temperate

Claire is moving today so say a little prayer to your lightning bolt wielders and eight-armed purple blokes. Moving in NY is grim business. Last night I paid my final visit to Yonkers and the cottage they call "Ferg". Tears. We did a great deal of packing and transporting up and down stairs. Amidst it all, I got to bitching about my shoddy haircut and Claire suggested I get rid of the lot. So we took a break around 12:30 and Amelia buzzed me a bit.

Claire: "Awwww, it's like our last semester in college all over again."

Casey took pictures so expect photos at the weekend.