some days you got it. some days you…

Rochester got about four inches of snow last night (which sud­denly made me thing of the album “six inches of snow” and now bad reggae is stuck in my head thanks to that) and I got my butt kicked in class. It was a great way for Sifu to send home the fact that I don’t cur­rently have a strong enough root/impart enough inten­tion into my tech­niques; all of which I needed to be reminded of (plus after the last few classes I might have been get­ting a little too big for my britches). Still I would have prefer a less ego-​deflating lesson. Either that or I just need to work on get­ting rid of my ego.

Ok, I just checked the insta poll. I’m psy­ched that I had 9 people respond so far (which con­firms that the audi­ence of my page is at least as big UPN’s)! Of course 33% or 3 people didn’t know that I’ve been post­ings MP3’s. Folks, no offense but it’s right above the survey. Not to hard to find. Check out the cur­rent Shonen Knife goodness!

Tina is back from the Olympics and meet­ing Steve Young! Thank­fully Chuck was with her at the time and kept her in line. ;-)

Finally, my blog goal for the evening is to try to get com­ments up and run­ning tonight. So per­haps by tomor­row I’ll have a way for folks to respond.

they’re ba-ack…

Today we spot­ted Mariah in the nest box and a col­lec­tive sigh of relief went up from kodak.com. Each year we always start to hold our breath about this time hoping that the Pere­grine Fal­cons will make it back safely for another year of Bird­cam. This year they’ve taken their sweet time making it back (espe­cially con­sid­er­ing the site ded­i­cated to them is going live on Monday). We still have yet to spot Cabot-​Sirocco (the male), but hope­fully he isn’t far behind Mariah. She’s spent most of the day off most of the cam­eras perched atop Camera 1:

This also means two things: 1. I won’t be going out to the nest box again. I have no desire to have one of these birds attack my head (they are very ter­ri­to­r­ial and will go after any nest intrud­ers). 2. We won’t have to go with our back up plan. If the fal­cons had not returned we were going to place Tony in a Chicken Cos­tume up in the nest. I still think that would have gen­er­ated more traf­fic to the site. Oh well, there is always next year.

In other news, the last two days have been super self affirm­ing. Unfor­tu­nately, the CFI I’ve men­tioned in past posts is going to slip its deliv­ery date. That’s not good, but there isn’t much that we can do about it. Oth­er­wise work is great (espe­cially now that the fal­cons are back). Out­side of the big k.com, things are rockin’ as well. Last night was another good mar­tial arts class. I finally feel as if I’m coming into my own when it comes to spar­ring. It is the second night in a row I’ve been com­pli­mented on my cre­ativ­ity. Now I need to work on break­ing out on better angles when pushed/pressured. Things on the plays are also going well. We’ve got a venue, per­for­mance dates and hope­fully *knocks on wood* a tech direc­tor. Plus I really feel like I’ve improved as a direc­tor. And, even with all that, I had time yes­ter­day to veg and play PS2 for a bit (Baldur’s Gate = mind­less fun…. yea!)!

Finally, there’s some new stuff on ze blog. I’ve added a rockin’ Insta Poll. So you’re expected to fill it out. Yeah, I’m talk­ing you! Plus, there’s a new MP3 packed with 100% engr­ish good­ness. Give it a risten!

- 30 -

monday, monday

I don’t get spam e-mailers. I work up this morn­ing to find all of my accounts bom­barded by credit-​check, get rich quick, and sex site e-mails. The funny part is not a single one of these e-mail’s sub­ject lines sug­gested their con­tents. There wasn’t even a half hearted attempt like: subj: Matt, here’s the infor­ma­tion you requested…. Instead it was stuff like the fol­low­ing from “Crissy”: subj: I’ve changed my address. May be it’s me, but I don’t get the thought process behind this. Like I’m sup­posed to think:

oh look, my friend Crissy has decided to move with­out telling me. Wait a minute… I don’t have a friend Crissy. But she’s decided to move and is send­ing me the infor­ma­tion. *opens e-mail* Oh, my new friend Crissy (and she must be my friend because she sent a nude pic­ture of her­self) hasn’t moved in the real world. But she’s got a new web­site! That I can visit! For only $19.95 a minute! That’s both a relief and a deal. Now where is my wallet…

Do these people get any bites from these random e-mails? Have you ever bought some­thing from one of these?

The Goril­laz con­cert Sat­ur­day night in Toronto was fas­ci­nat­ing and at the same time utterly unful­fill­ing. The band per­formed behind a translu­cent cur­tain that had a mul­ti­me­dia slide pro­jec­tion show on it. Above them hung a huge screen that had a video show pro­jected on it. The show was short (last­ing only an hour or so) and devoid of any of the typ­i­cally con­cert inter­ac­tion cues (thanks to having the band behind a cur­tain). There was no single point of focus and one couldn’t tell what was hap­pen­ing on stage. The band had almost no inter­ac­tion with the audi­ence (thanks to the screen). In fact, it took the crowd about two min­utes to real­ize that they left the stage (prob­a­bly one of the rea­sons there was no encore… a con­cert first for me). As for the videos, my hope was we were going to get videos of the car­toon ver­sions of the Goril­laz play­ing the con­cert. Nope. Instead we got loops and pat­terns. No attempt was made to relate them to the show. Which was too bad., and a major missed oppor­tu­nity. I’m still very happy that I went to see the show. I just wished it had been another week­end because I had to miss some fun goings on here in Rochester.

In other news, I’m sched­ul­ing a hair cut this week and I’m going to do some­thing rad­i­cal. I’m not com­pletely sure what yet. But I think this will be part 2 of the makeover (only about a month and a half late). Oh, and a new MP3 will go up tomor­row. Any pref­er­ence? I have a couple choices… wacky or more seri­ous or just bad?

btw, Jenny I just tried the col­or­gen­ics and have to put in the vote that it’s a bunch of hooie. Mine made no sense (not even in those vauge for­tune telling terms). I think I could get better results from Ms Cleo.

brain a leetle foggy

I went to a wine tast­ing last night. Very good, with the excep­tion that tast­ing wine leads to get­ting tipsey. And I got a little tipsey. Ok a lot tipsey. So after about the third wine I don’t think I was the best judge of qual­ity. Julia’s par­ents once shared a valu­able piece of advice with me: if you do a winery tour, stop buying after the second stop as every­thing tastes good by then. I think they learned that lesson the hard way. Speak­ing of Julia, we had a long IM con­ver­sa­tion last night (she had to suffer through my less than stel­lar typing due to my inebriation).

Back on the wine tast­ing, I met some new people and had a couple inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tions. They were all part of “The Young Friends of the MAG” (Memo­r­ial Art Gallery… where the boozin’ was held) group.

It looks like I’m not the only one who had a night of drunken fun.

Ok, I’m being a me too type and trying the Friday Five. Here’s mine for this week:

1. Hey, baby, what’s your sign? Do you think it fits you pretty well? Virgo and no. I’m a per­fec­tion­ist and can be a little anal but that’s where the sim­i­lar­i­ties end.

2. What’s the worst birth­day gift you’ve ever received? That’s a tough one. I hon­estly don’t know. I’m always psy­ched when I get gifts. Oh wait, for years my family thought I liked Star Trek a lot more than I ever did. So I would get Star Trek gifts (typ­i­cally books my mother found on the reduced rack) and usu­ally try to explain that I didn’t want them to no avail.

3. What’s the best birth­day gift you’ve ever received? Again I’m not sure. I really liked the presents that I got this year from everyone

4. What’s the best way you’ve cel­e­brated your birth­day thus far? Prob­a­bly this year’s. Any­time I get to spend time with friends and they give me presents is cause for celebration.

5. What are your plans for this week­end? Goin’ to Toronto to see the Goril­laz. Plus I may have a date on Sunday night. Woo Hoo. Did you feel hell freeze over?

GRRRRRRR!

AAAAR­RGGUH­H­HHH! BLOG­GER just lost my five para­graph post! GRRRR!

I don’t have enough time to re-​key it, so you now get the short ver­sion in bullet form (it’s prob­a­bly better this way anyway):

• I (and every­one at kodak.com) seems to be in a BLAH mood. Not quite a depres­sion (that would take too much effort). Jenny seems to be expe­ri­enc­ing the same thing. I’m also fight­ing a cold.
• I hope both the cold and the BLAH lift by the week­end as I’m going to Toronto on Sat­ur­day to see the goril­laz in concert.
• Last night was a good mar­tial arts class. Pat killed my legs: today I have two half dollar sized bits of muscle pain halfway up my outer thigh nerve lines (making walk­ing and climb­ing stairs ohh so much fun) thanks to his super accu­rate Thai kicks. There was also lots of spar­ring last night. Both Pat and Aaron did very well and I was pretty sat­is­fied with myself (it helps having people to try and stay better than). I’m also started get­ting tutored on break­falls by an Aiki Ju Jit­su­ist. I spent a chunk of time after class being pitched across the room.
• I blew Aaron’s cover by announc­ing he missed class on Monday. Next time let me know ahead of time when you’re going out to raise hell with­out Jenny know­ing, ok? I’ll be happy to tell her you were in class *wink* *wink*. (I like the “I had to write a paper excuse” you gave her… great save!)
• Finally, I’ve been think­ing a lot as of late about the amount of self cen­sor­ing I’ve been doing on the blog. I’m not sure if it’s a mood or I simply care too much about what all my read­ers (the five of you) think. Who knows… A lot of thoughts and little things haven’t made it to the blog. Oh well…

Ok. Before this gets lost, lemme post!

Bits and pieces of my life for this morning

I saw The Royal Tenen­baums last night. What a ter­rific movie! A little styl­is­ti­cally rem­i­nis­cent of Amélie. Gene Hack­man is phe­nom­e­nal in the film and really deserved an Oscar nod for it (don’t get me started on the Oscars… grr). It’s a little tough to find now, but catch this if you can.

Mar­tial arts on Monday was great (even though some slack­ers were not there)! It was my third time boxing (now that I have the gloves) and I’m still get­ting used to it. I spent most of the time let­ting Pat hit me in order to con­di­tion my body to react to a punch. It also rein­forced my deci­sion that I just don’t like being hit. But Coach came up to me after class and com­pli­mented me on my move­ment (really Sifu deserves the com­pli­ment, it took five years of his hard work to get me that mobile). That felt really good. Then Kung Fu was great as well. We sparred for most of the night and I threw every move that I had and made a few up on the fly. :-) I got a couple com­pli­ments on that. And that pos­i­tive rein­force­ment rocks!

mmm mixed nuts are good!

And finally I bring you vin­tage porn from inside the inside of Kodak Tower. I took this pic­ture of a old photo on one of the sup­port poles on Monday while fixing the bird­cams. Mmmm… old school skin. Enjoy….

geek­ing out

I have to say that right now is a great time to be a comic book fan. We’re in the midst of a cre­ative renais­sance where writ­ing and art are quickly coming into bal­ance. Lemme explain… I became addicted to paper crack in high school. At that time, the early 90s, all that mat­tered was the art: Artists dom­i­nated the indus­try (and tended to have mon­ster egos). I even har­bored dreams of get­ting into the biz (which lead to a great story and the worst inter­view of my life… I’ll share that story some day).

By the time I got into col­lege comics started to loose their appeal. There were three main rea­sons:

1. Alan Moore’s Watch­men started the process of ruin­ing comics for me. On first read the art, pro­vided by Dave Gib­bons, wasn’t up the to “level” that I was used to (in ret­ro­spect I think it’s one of the best illus­trated books ever). But the story blew my mind. It decon­structed every sto­ry­telling device I was used to and steam­rolled all the indus­try stereo­types I knew. Watch­men was the first legit­i­mate piece of graphic lit­er­a­ture I read. (side note: To this day think that it’s sus­ten­ta­tive enough to use in a high school or col­lege Eng­lish class. If you don’t think comics can tran­scend into lit­er­a­ture, this is a must read). This dis­cov­ery led me to the real­iza­tion that:
2. The major­ity of comic books were soap operas for boys (and poorly writ­ten ones at that). After Watch­men I real­ized that 99% of the famous artists who were writ­ing books couldn’t script their way out of a paper bag (most of the writ­ers couldn’t either). Comics might have been beau­ti­ful on the sur­face but few had any sub­stance. I also was start­ing to get a little skeezed out by the por­trayal of women in the books. Finally,
3. My habit was bank­rupt­ing me. I was a po col­lege stu­dent and could no longer afford a $40 a month habit.

So I stopped col­lect­ing (except for the odd one here or there). During my “down time” the indus­try went through a rev­o­lu­tion. The bottom dropped out of the col­lect­ing for profit side of the indus­try (the weir­does who think they can make mil­lions on a poly­bagged, vari­ant cover, signed issue #1). And the writ­ing was get­ting staler and staler (the same plots and gim­micks rehashed time and time again).

But change was start­ing too. DC (home of Batman, Super­man and others) began pub­lish­ing alter­na­tive titles like The Sand­man that explored new sto­ry­telling ter­ri­tory. New pub­lish­ing tech­nolo­gies (like the inter­net and afford­able low run print­ing) have allowed smaller com­pa­nies and indi­vid­u­als to pub­lish out­side of the major Labels (Marvel and DC). That in turn has caused the larger com­pa­nies to embrace indy cre­ators and in turn improve their mate­r­ial. Sud­denly writ­ing was as, if not more impor­tant than art. All of that has led to a real strain on my budget as books are now worth buying again. Which leads me to this week­end. I made my weekly crack run to the comic store around the corner from me and made a discovery:

I bought Blue Monday: The Love­cats by Chynna Clugston-​Major (pub­lished by Oni Press) on a whim. Chynna’s work, with its smooth anime style, caught my eye when fea­tured in a Mavel book a few months ago. That, plus a Cure inspired title, was enough to make flip through the book in the shop. By the third page I was sold! The series take place in a small town high school in what seems to be the late 80/early 90’s. Chynna, who also writes the book, really cap­tures the high school expe­ri­ence: fluid visu­als, the right mix of angst and excite­ment, great dialog and the inte­gra­tion of music of the time (the Cure, the Kinks, Social Dis­tor­tion are amoung the bands whose music fac­tors heav­ily into the story). Plus, nary a person in span­dex to be seen.

I know most folks read­ing this blog are not into comics, but if you’ve ever wanted to see what the medium is capa­ble when you don’t have heros/gods/metabeings beat­ing the crap outta each other check out this book.

in other news

New MP3 to your left. Last week’s, A Letter Elise (Unplugged), is still avail­able as a link.

I’m making another trek to the top of Kodak Tower today to work on Bird­cam. Thank­fully I don’t think I’ll have to go out­side (as its cold and snowy). The work out inven­to­ry­ing kodak.com con­tin­ues. Hope­fully we’ll make the deadline.

Rehearsals went just about as well as I could expect last night. I’ll be leav­ing work early today to nego­ti­ate for the play­ing space. So by tonight we should have a the­atre. Then the real work starts. T minus a months and a half.

Finally, I don’t know about you, but this kinda scares me. Every day I see more in more value is the teach­ing of phi­los­o­phy and ethics in col­lege. There really needs to be more open debate on things like arti­fi­cial wombs.