The Foshay Building

Went to Minneapolis. Didn't know what to expect. It was like a cold Brasilia - super modern. In the middle of all that hypermodernity was the Foshay building. It's old-timeyness in the middle of Gattaca was what made me take the picture. When I got home I read the backstory at Lileks. 

I'm in the groove now, baby!

Hey - how's my exclamation points working out? Pretty awesome, no? Well, here's the next one - U-Roy. Not U-Larry or U-Linda but U-Roy. I (and I) had hitched out west (instant way to be murdered nowadays) and read a whole big article on the Rastafarians on the way; U-Roy was a subcomponent of the whole "reggae-as-religion" concept. Now I think all - excuse me - ALL religion (I hit my keyboard key extra hard during the "ALL") are a waste of time or a highway to a suicide bomb or just not for me - do what feels good for you. But U-Roy remains a constant. Blah blah Blah - precursor to rap - blah blah blah toastmaster a la' Lee Perry - blah blah blah seminal influence - who gives a crap, this is the best song ever. Lissen.

 

Bad Andy !! Better yet, Supa-bad Andy !!!!!!!!!

The song Mama Guitar is from A Face in the Crowd, a movie that Andy Griffith starred in. It's really cool - hard to believe good ol' Andy Taylor could be such a badass. This song is in the background of a scene where a leering Andy (playing "Lonesome" Rhodes) watches a twirling contest. The juxtaposition of the music and the look of Lonesome's ill-intent crescendo exquisitely uncomfortably. This is why we watch [good] movies: something is being said on many levels at once and the whole of that experience is worth more than the sum of the parts (so let's add to that juxtaposition the mise-en-scene & cutting). Mama Guitar is a far cry from his "What it was, was football" bumpkin routines. It rocks!

Horton Heat !!

Went to the House of Blues in Atlantic City. Deplorable shakedown by guards in the beginning after a 17 mile march past casinos - Dan Akroyd will roll over in his grave when he dies. Great show. Supersuckers came down on the empty garishness of Atlantic Shitty and Itelligent Design (Comparing jackalopes to Adam & Eve). It was Eddie Spaghetti's son Quatro's birthday - and my son's too henceforth known as "audience member". Heat came out and stopped the show in the middle to refute someone on their forum who said they had the same playlist for 10 years by playing 45 minutes of requests - after having played their whole Christmas album. Yike. Any way the old VGA cam came with me disguised on my keychain & since it takes such crappy photos I turned it into a rockin slideshow.

Smashed Nokia

Beautiful Abstraction from a toxic workplaceMy last job was destroying me. People. Anyway, I smashed my phone in anger, (it got fixed!) and when a friend suggested that "It was art - like you like!" I created a series of photographs that captured the experience of looking at the unit from behind the wheel of my car. I worked the whole thing out as a piece for display as an assignment from a leadership coach who, it turns out, could care less whether I finished it while parenting, working out and working more than full time. It was like a Chinese restaurant picture menu with the stages from the animated gif as individual backlit images. She got paid,

Panorama Bicycle Ride

Frequently Bicycling past here........This is Harrisonville lake. I took shots with an 8mb VGA camera and spliced them together. Old-timey-style. The softness is attractive to me. Click on the pic for link to full-size.

Liberation Webb

Why do I feel thankful? Can someone help me with this? I've abandoned all models of what the things that drive the existence of a universe could be. But I still feel thankful - maybe I shouldn't and it's just a behavior burned into me, but it doesn't feel that way - it feels like....symmetry. I think love is the other component. Gratitude is conscious and love is not - both have the same outcome akin to giving away your endorphins.