Month: June 2006

Parenting Advice From Adult Swim: Dr. Venture Says…

“…if you have a clumsy child you make them wear a helmet, if you have death-prone children you keep a few clones of them in your lab.”

Love The Venture Brothers. Season 2 has arrived!!!! Thank you [adult swim].

Cool Rooms: '30's Cartoon Style for Kids, Mario Bros. for Guests

For your decorating consideration, two bedrooms.

Vintage Cartoon




Link (via Boing Boing)

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Super Mario Bros.




Link (via Cartoon Brew)

Music: Mine, Grant's and Muse's

I’ve wasted much of the morning using Apple’s Garageband program to screw with songs of my own, plus a couple of midis pulled from the internet.  The tunes will never amount to anything significant, but its fun noodling around with them

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Big-time news for an Atlanta stagehand/musician friend of mine.  Grant Davis (pictured above with Arlo Guthrie) just got signed to Sony.  His music is county/rock, he practically lives at Sidelines, and his album is being played on stations out west from what I heard.  This weekend friends will be getting together to bust his chops and ask for money.  

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MUSE!

I never thought that I would be seeing my favorite british rock band in Atlanta, even though they have played here in the past.  But they’ll be at the Tabernacle, August 6th.  Is it stupid that the Tabernacle doesn’t have a website?  Anyways, the Muse myspace page is streaming the whole album, which I will be listening to once I am done posting this.  British online music site PlayLouder posted that tonight they will be playing a London show.

“Tonight they play their comeback show at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, dubbed The Empire Strikes Back Super Massive Concert, it’s a gig for fans only… and PlayLouder, who will be popping along to tell you how it goes. PlayLouder that is, not fans. They’d just scream hysterically in your face while their eyeliner runs everywhere. . .       . . .Go on admit it, it’s good isn’t it. . . “

New album, coming to the ATL, good?… yes it is!

Variety Makes Us Stronger: Atlanta Pride Parade 2006

This isn’t my Atlanta Pride picture, but I love it. Click to picture for Far Left’s story behind the shot.

It was a year-ago this weekend that my wife and I visited Atlanta for the first time, and searched Mid-Town for apartments. Our building manager apologized for the parking situation, it was Pride Weekend 2005 and parking was at a premium. We loved the neighborhood and building. Now this year, we walked to Pride, and got rained out in the process. But we did get to see Dykes on Bikes start the parade off as well as good chunk of the other people in the event. And then we walked a few short blocks home, happy to be this close to the parade route.

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There’s a bit of a brouhaha over gay pride and culture between Duane and ATL Malcontent . I have a couple of of gay friends who have relocated from San Francisco to LA. Both academic professional, both have either had strained family relationships or have been completely disowned because of being gay. Like ATL Malcontent, they don’t identify with pride parades, flaming queers and in-your-face activism.

To me this argument would be almost like being told I was a self-loathing straight guy because I didn’t embrace the sex-and-spectacle event that was Spring Break in Daytona Beach. Having participated in one while in college, if that wasn’t Straight Pride Week, then I don’t know what was. When I told people that spring break was a miserable time, I got asked how I couldn’t have had a great time with all the titty and beer. Because, it was retarded, full of drunk driving and watching people fuck in the parking lot of our hotel just didn’t hold the same appeal for me as my roommates at the time. And yet I don’t feel lesser for it.

Back to Duane, ATL Mal. and everyone else who has a stake in this conversation. My point is the sand box is big enough for everybody, be it Mary Cheney and log-cabin Conservatives, leather-loving bears to twinkle-fairy club kids, and every degree and moderation between. Variety, difference and dissension are all good things. And that holds true for every persuasion, orientation, social movement, religion and ethnic group.

And that’s my 2 cents.

I Am What I Surf: or… If I Can't Remember It, Did It Really Matter?

I was surfing my usual websites, which include: Memeorandum, Arts & Letters Daily, Boing Boing, Drawn!, BibliOdyssey, and Largehearted Boy, amongst my many daily diversions.

My wife will peer curiously at me, relentlessly combing the Internet and ask with both curiosity and skepticism, “What are you looking at?” How to answer? These and many other sites offer daily introductions to things artistic, musical and technological. But what am I looking at? Many are blogs, or sites composed of contributing users that post their personal musings.

What….?

Hipster Intelligentsia,
trendy pursuits,
internet-enabled groupthink.

All these things capture the main attractions of my favorite sites. It like panning for gold, trying to tease little nuggets of goodness that I can bookmark, google, explore and put into a growing category of “Interesting Things.” And the like-minded community of online enthusiast are more then able to provide a collection of intriguing leads. To a degree, these site do turn into an echo chamber, where each on has been turned on to the same thing at the same time, and reducing the actual amount of new things to read about.

Truth be told, if I was forced to slow down and was quizzed, I’d be often hard pressed to tell you what I actually read. Many times, I would only be able to tell you is that I felt like I worked hard and it was really enjoyable. If all the new tech news, trendy designs, cool mp3s, rediscovered Victorian prints, etc don’t take hold in my memory, what was their worth.

I love me the internet and I spend so much time with it. Just trying to figure if a majority of that time is well spent.

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In the mean time….

I like
The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
Gizmodo
Daily Rotten
Copy, Right?
Fluxblog

Summer Loving, Driving’s A Blast…

Atlanta’s driving stupidity always amazes. Today’s accident-in-the-making was seen on North Ave, while driving back from Georgia Tech. Heading east, both lanes are packed and slow moving, the usual. An impatient pickup truck pulls out into the traffic-free west-bound lanes, drives a block, goes onto the sidewalk as traffic starts towards the truck and ducks into Tech’s campus. Probably lasted all of 15 seconds, but stupid for all of them! Makes me wish my car was video equipped, I’d be posting dumb driving clips every day.

Interestingly enough, with all the damage New Orleans signs and traffic lights suffered, the drivers have compensated by becoming very polite and accommodating. Whenever there was a busted light, all the drivers assumed that it was a 4-way stop and took their turns. Same with blinking traffic lights, good manners prevailed. A big change from when I lived there.

Thankfully, Atlanta is still the same.

Blogger Boozing and Art Stuff in the ATL

Now that I’m back in town, I’m hitting the regular places for the sights and possible job ops. I’m also finding my first week back has a rather full calender.

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Yesterday… ATL Blogger Monthly Drinkfest

Blogger meetup with much drinking… a bloganalia. Like usual, much drinking, laughing, dirty looks, faux indignation and maybe some crushing on our server. I’m sure more details and incriminating pictures will be posted on atlbloggers.net. One of the things that was worked on on our side of the table was a drink for Dave, who seemingly loves mustard.

“The Daily Dose”

A layered drink much like a Mind Eraser. Starting from the bottom layer up: mustard, Yager, Baileys, and chili-pepper oil floating on top. To be drunk with a straw. Yum!

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Today… Tom Zarrilli Artist Talk @ The Contemporary

The show was an extension of Tom Zarrilli’s yard sale adventures, which he chronicles online at Yard Sale Addict. The show will end Saturday with a sale of most of the items on display, and a certificate of authenticity for each item. While only four people showed for the artist talk, it was an interesting one.

Also at the Contemporary, was Didi Dunphy’s installation, “Recess Playscape.”

It was far too much fun. The day before these pictures were taken , the skateboard room had 4 young kids on the skateboards, riding on their stomachs like motorized turtles yelling at their moms to time them as they raced across the gallery.

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Friday: ABC @ Earthlink Live

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Saturday: back to work for the Changchun Acrobatic Troupe at the Ferst Center.

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Sunday: The Pride Parade

New Orleans and Now Back Home in Atlanta

It is now 5 am. We arrived home a few hours ago, but unpacking and foolish TV watching kept us up until now. The last stop on our trans-American trip was New Orleans. It was where I first moved to once out of college and was home for 7 years. The tales of Katrina’s devastation had me primed for something. And yet the visit didin’t have me feeling truly aware of the scope of things. We didn’t get to go around the city much, leaving the hardest hit areas unseen. On Magazine St. stores of all sort were open, and the trendy kids were out and about. Everything gave the feeling of recovery and strength. But it wasn’t the same city I left and I could’t resolve what I was seeing and what I knew was the truth of the city.

It was leaving the city and heading East that the scope of Katrina’s damage was more ev9odnt. The east was heavily hit. The ghost town apartment complexes and blocks of desolate homes were proof. Main, multi-lane streets were lightly traveled and business signs remains blank, broken and unlit.

While the roads were rough in New Orleans, it was a pothole on the I-10 that was fatal to a front tire. Which meant changing a tire while being blasted by traffic, an unexpected stop in Sliddel, La and 3 hour delay in getting back on the road while waiting for a new tire. The only benefit was an unexpectedly good Lebanese meal at a place whose’s name escapes me.

There are many pictures to post and a few more stories to tell. Later… in future posts,