O C T O B E R 0 3
Dave describes Sylvia Gaffney's Design Aesthetics class. Shoot is launched with various Atlanta photos. Jeff launches his own site. Is Sigur Ros overrated? Don and Andrew see a goose get nailed by a golf ball. Jeff and Andrew go to a Built To Spill concert.
Chocolate Chip Cookies are the Greatest
Current CD's playing in my car: 1. Weezer - Blue Album (never gets old) 2. Taking Back Sunday - Tell all your friends 3. Okay Samurai - The Possibility War 4. Outkast - Speakerboxxx/The Love Below 5. Saves the Day - Through Being Cool. And Now I leave you with inspiring quote that lead me to believe that there is more to life itself, "Hello, my name is Andrew...chocolate chip cookies are the greatest, boom, boom, hehehe."
Friday, October 31 at 6:50 AM
Pentagram and Graphic Havoc
Kerri Powell spoke to PC students at a seminar today; she's from an amazing international design firm called Pentagram. Among many other things, she helped design stuff for the Chambers hotel in New York, including the trendy restaurant "Town." (read as "Town Square"). It was mentioned in a Sex and the City episode. Later today, my Creative Process class had a teleconference with Peter Rentz from Graphic Havoc, a small 5-person company. They've recently done the red/white vector-based TV ads for Target, as well as promos for Nike, Hot Jobs, Soul555, Cartoon Network (pretty much all the Toonami stuff), MTV2 and ESPN. Anyway, it was an exciting day of listening to and talking with cool people...pretty inspiring.
Thursday, October 30 at 3:00 PM
Designing Olmec Pandas
First - new Shoot today; meet our design family.
Five weeks have passed since I began Portfolio Center, and I can say with complete confidence that this is where I belong. I'm excited to wake up in the morning. I feel that I have improved tremendously as a designer already. My friends, instructors, and classes consistently amaze me, and I love them all. So what exactly is going on here to keep the smile on my face? What's a day in the life of a Portfolio Center designer?
Let's take Sylvia's class as an example. All first quarter design students must take Design Aesthetics with Sylvia Gaffney. It's a rite of passage class that you hear rumors about - students leaving class crying after their work is critiqued, pulling all-nighters to finish the varied batches of home assignments every week, and egos being demolished into grains of sand. It is by far my favorite class. Our first week assignment was to select an animal and an ancient civilization from a list and merge the two - design the animal as the civilization would have, even (especially) if they never co-existed. This meant researching the civilization at the library and coming up with a "design alphabet" of the materials, shapes, lines, glyphs, and letterforms they used. Then we drew 100 2"x2" rough thumbnails of ideas from a list of suggestions (3 with heavy distortions, 3 out of cut paper, 3 underneath views, etc.), cleaned up and redrew our best 33, and then made 5"x6" sketches of our best 11. Class time is mainly spent on critiques, with each student getting 15-20 minutes to receive feedback on his/her work. It's not just about a union of the civilization and the animal - it's placement on the page, color values, an area of focus, contrast, and dozens of other details. I chose the Olmec civilization and the Giant Panda. I know way too much about the Olmecs now - from their ritual decapitation of statues to their forced deformations of the skull to their worship of jaguars. They were the mother culture of Mesoamerica, starting many things that the more-famous Mayans would later build upon (calendars, ball games, temples). I chose it for a nostalgic reason - because on an old Nickelodeon show, Legends of the Hidden Temple, there was a giant talking head called Olmec. Turns out that this is the calling card of the Olmecs - enormous basalt heads weighing an average of about 5 tons.
But this is not a history lesson; sorry. Week two made us create our best 5 designs as 10"x12", and enlarge our personal favorite to 20"x24", all in grayscale. We recreated our posters using cutout paper (down to every last detail - harder than it sounds) in week three and learned that we were making a poster for a children's exhibit in a zoo or museum. Week four had us adding titles ("Bamboo and Basalt Ajawsphere"), dates (May 15 - August 9, 2004), and a venue's logo and typography (Port Discovery in Baltimore). For this week, we had to start the thumbnail process over with bag or packaging designs for our souvenir store, all with secondary reuses. I made three miniature bags for yesterday's class and will eventually be buying the materials to actually create finished versions (you'll see pictures of all this stuff one day...probably at the end of the quarter). One of my boxes has a blue/green cellophane front that shows through an Olmec landscape in the back interior; the front can unhook and fold down to become a lake for a playset that includes a clip-on panda clutching to the Indiana Jones whip-rope handles.
We're also sent on various seemingly crazy assignments every week. Go to an Asian paper store and check out the handmade papers. Go to an orchard and find the connection between the veins of lemon citrus, rinds, bark and leaves. Buy the latest issue of Newsweek and read the article about McMansions and think about the obsession with bigger houses when smaller houses are often much more functional. Interview a kid. Observe someone doing something extremely well and think about if they're doing it consciously or not. We usually have a dozen little adventures/assignments/projects a week for that class alone, and they force us to get outside of our comfort zone and try new things while seeing more of Atlanta.
The heart of the class is the critique. Sylvia knows her stuff - everything from the most obscure details about your civilization to instantly solving a problem you're having with a simple, creative answer. And now I've been saturated with the world of design. An Olmec Panda poster isn't anything in the big picture, but I'm suddenly realizing why I'm here - design truly influences the way I live. We interact with millions of designs a day, whether it's the bed we sleep in, the car we drive in or the food we eat. Portfolio Center infuses a need to stop accepting the normal and get creative in order to change the world. It's a message that I read in The Fountainhead this summer and still continues to motivate me to explode through the limits of my imagination. This is an industry and atmosphere that I feel so comfortable in, surrounded by a diverse talent of people from all walks of life.
Yeah, life's pretty good right now.
Tuesday, October 28 at 10:36 PM
Konami
Last night I finished recording and mixing Konami, the first of the new songs I'm working on for demo purposes. I think it turned out well for a first attempt - I was learning how to use the software as I went along. The beginning of the song was fun to work on - I used an effect called "bitcrusher" on the guitar for the left ear and a distorted reverse guitar strum for the right. Right now you can only download it from my Portfolio Center webspace, but by the end of the week I hope to have set up a new IUMA page. The next song I'll be doing is currently untitled, more Hawaiian Treehouse-esque, and it might have some drums and bass thrown in as well. Hope you like Konami...
bleep bloop will rock you now / the coolest kid in town / cause i love / eight bit youth nostalgia / it's 1989 / got 30 extra lives / i'm home free / all thanks to konami / where do you go when rock is gone? / where do you go / up up, down down, left right. left right, b, a, select start / a generation's past / VGs will still kick...the booty / stay retro / with old school nintendo / it's 1988 / my visions pixelate / i feel free / permanent tanooki / towards, down, down-towards, fierce punch / justin bailey
Saturday, October 25 at 4:34 PM
I'm Loving It, Ba Da Ba Ba Ba!
I had no idea that you could order pizza online nowadays. Apparently it's been around for a while, but it's not really advertised that much. Jeff and I thought it was the coolest thing ever and had to try it out tonight.
I'm working on an acoustic verison of Konami which should be online by Saturday. I was fooling around with doing a full version with a drum machine and keyboards, but it would probably be misleading for a song intended to be used for an acoustic demo. Maybe some other time.
Thursday, October 23 at 10:23 PM
More Like Alice In Crap
Don't you hate it when the only song on the radio during the drive home is Alice in Chains? Don't you hate it when that's happened three freaking days in a row?
Wednesday, October 22 at 3:13 PM
I'd Tell You But I'd Have To Kill You
Now, just like Jeff and Don, I too can write on the site from work. I started on Monday and really like the place; I have my own office with a window, computer, phone, and personalized coffee mug and business cards. Glad to see all of the essentials are taken care of. During the whole security clearance background check-a-roonie I was asked to give the names and contact information for everyone I had ever seen in my entire life. Chances are if you're reading this you might be getting a call about my past.
Today I brought in the Possibility Wars cd and rocked out while I did my thing. I have to disagree with Eugena about the Mr. Punhong mystery word. I have to believe that he was genuinely worried that we might actually be corroding. Well, back to work. Oh, and there's a chance that a new car might be in my future.
at 1:22 PM
The Audio Buddy Has Phantom Power
Shoot is the latest addition to Okay Samurai Multimedia - a section to complement the words on this page by doing the same thing for pictures. Shoot will probably be updated monthly with new photos and adventures - right now all I have are a few random pictures from my first month in Atlanta. For future additions, I'm interested in following the format of the Emotion Eric Adventures for a few trips of my own - from a tour of Portfolio Center to trying all the international flavors at the Coca Cola factory...and I'm open to any ideas you may have.
If all goes well, there will be a new song recorded and online by the end of the week...
Tuesday, October 21 at 8:41 PM
Be You Angels? Nay, We Are But Men. Rock.
Lot of great posts this week. I'm excited to see jeffchin.com up and running - Jeff baked the HTML code like it was oven-fresh homemade apple pie, never even left to cool on the metaphorical windowsill. And yeah Eugene, that's the conclusion I came to also; "recording" makes the most sense...but still it remains the biggest Okay Samurai unsolved mystery. Pongpun Punhong, wherever you are, please use a search engine to find this site and contact us.
I mentioned earlier in the week about how immersed in music I've been lately, so I'll get all jeffchin.com on you and rock some quick album reviews. I already talked about Sigur Ros, but I like both () and Agaetis Byrjun about the same. Although Gavin DeGraw's Chariot has some catchy standout songs (Follow Through, Chariot, More Than Anyone) with a good voice, he doesn't seem to distinguish himself enough from other singer/songwriters. A song called "Chemical Party" is commercialized with drug references in an attempt to be cool with the college crowd, but like several other songs, a lot of his stuff seems formulaic and predictable. Maroon 5's Songs About Jane rocks. You've heard "Harder To Breathe" on the radio, and "She Will Be Loved" is also perfect single material. Their Wednesday concert here was sold out, but they have a great interview in the latest Rolling Stone. Jason Mraz Live was released in 2001; scaled-back and absolutely incredible. The scat-esque things Mraz does with his voice work well with the music (remember when I washed my hands next to him last December?). Anyway, "Hey Love" has been stuck in my head the entire week. I had never listened to Tenacious D before, but School of Rock piqued my interest in Jack Black. The self-titled album is hilariously obscene, but these guys rock..."Tribute" is musically brilliant. I hope a little Tenacious D rock shows up in these upcoming songs I'm writing. Finally, I'm still undecided on John Mayer's latest effort, Heavier Things. I love "Bigger Than My Body" and "Clarity", and I'm starting to come around to "Daughters" and "New Deep". He's evolved from Room For Squares, especially with the focus on electric guitars and horns, but I think his slower material here is weaker than it was on the previous albums.
Friday, October 17 at 10:38 PM
The Secret of Mr. Punhong
I'm not quite sure if anyone of the other guys have already uncovered or answered this, but I think I have found the key to unlock Pandora's box that to which is our very own Mr. Punhong. For those of you that don't know, let me explain. I recently recieved my copy of the Okay Samurai Possibility War CD. One of the tracks is entitled, "Tribute to Mister Punhong." Basically the track consists of Dave and Andrew recording our old shop teacher (Mr. Punhong) saying a bunch of random things he used to yell at us during class. These include, "Be careful with Ban Saw," "Bwing in yo twenty dollaws," and the now famous, "What you do, you make mick mess, don't spwash wata on Billy!" But there was one part that remained a mystery to us all maybe til now. There's a brief conversation between Dave, Andrew, and Mr. Punhong and before the hilarious track begins, Mr. Punhong replies, "Oh, I used to do this one in High School, Oh, you like CARODING?" What da heck is that. I don't even think caroding is found in the english, french, or thai dicitionary (considering Mr. Punhong was from Thailand and had a very heavy accent I might add). But still, we had no idea what he was saying. Some speculated he was saying "karate," but that doesn't make any sense. Others thought he was saying "corroding" as in when metal corrodes or rusts away. Well, he was a shop teacher and dealt with wood and metal tools, but still it remained a dark mystery. But as I listened to the track several times, I realized he may have been trying to say..."recording." As in "oh you like recording?" Makes sense right. Dave and Andrew surprising Mr. Punhong with a tape recorder to record his every word, one would only expect a person like Mr. Punhong to ask, "oh you like recording." So to all those that wondered what in the world Mr. Punhong was trying to communicate to Dave and Andrew I believe the word was "recording." And if dave, andrew, don, and jeff had already figured this out, i'm sorry to steal your thunder. So talk to you all soon, and don't forget, don't make mick messes, okay?
at 11:53 AM
Lego Masters Competition
Dave and Andrew, this might be right up your alley. Heard the commercial on WHFS that there's going to be a Lego building competition right here in DC at the Art Institute. Not sure exactly when it is coming to town, but it starts in San Diego, CA on Oct 30th. Apparently each builder will get 2000 blocks, 45 minutes and the theme of the project right when the clock starts. Check out the details at these sites: LEGOMasterbuilder.com and Art Institute News. Happy building!
Thursday, October 16 at 2:16 PM
jeffchin.com has gone live!
Over the last 7-10 days I have been eye-deep in setting up, and tweaking my new website jeffchin.com . Not having done any html since freshman year in college (which by the way was 5 years ago!), I had to learn it all over again. After posting on dave2n.com became a fairly regular thing, I felt bad about taking up Dave's bandwidth with my sometimes irrelevant movie or music reviews. I had also gotten a phone/camera, and wanted a central place where people could see my pictures.
Basically the habit of me rating a movie, concert (or any situation for that matter) on the no-nonsense grading scale of 1 to 100, has turned into the beast that is jeffchin.com. The main purpose of the site is to provide music and movie reviews that you can trust! haha, so cheesy. I wish I could have all the CDs, movie tickets and concert tickets provided for me, but they aren't, so the reviews will come in sporadically as I buy them, borrow them, or have a chance to write about them. With that being said, I invite all dave2n.com readers to also check out jeffchin.com. For those of you at work, hopefully this will become part of the daily "rotation", as I will be updating it quite frequently. There is a text link in the left navigation panel, and also randomly a jeffchin.com banner appearing right above that (thanks dave) I'll still be posting on dave2n.com, but a lot less frequently. Hope you all have a chance to check it out!
at 9:12 AM
Hope Ya Learned Something!
Long time no blog. I must admit that Monday involved intensity in ten cities, and I'm not just metaphorically speaking. I had the day off work because the government gives their workers every single holiday ever imagined, including the epic "Zimbabwe New Year", "Diagnate the Corners Day", and the infamous "Everyboday Hates Jagwinder Celebration". So methinks, what could be better on this beautiful day than golfing with fish with good friend Andrew. So we show up at Burke Lake around 2pm and much to our disgruntlemnt there was a waiting list so we signed up for the 4:20 tee-time and left to play a round of frisbee golf. We had a little extra time after that so we hit some golf balls at the driving range until the lady called us over the intercom to the first hole. I somehow manage to hit about a 12 foot put on the first hole and get par (a feat that neither andrew or I was able to manage again the rest of the day). So it turns out the we get paired up with a nice Asian couple, very friendly, with a kid a little younger than us. Little did we know that the lady was a GOOSE KILLER!!!... On the 2nd hole, she was getting ready to tee off and there is a flock of geese hanging out on the downward sloping hill after the tees. She hits a freaking LINE DRIVE ROCKET and clocks one of the geese in the freaking HEAD!!! The goose went down like a rock and we all rushed over to see if it was okay (which it obviously was not). After about 5 minutes the goose attempted to fly back to its buddies while falling over itself into a heap on the ground and making this horrible moaning sound. We figured that the goose would be okay, despite its internal hemmoraging, and continued to play. Another amazing thing happened around the 6th or 7th hole. There was some water about 40 or 50 yards away from the tee and Andrew hits a line drive that richochets OFF THE WATER, bounces up the hill and lands about 30 foot away from the green... It was incredible, his ball pulled a Jesus-like maneuver and walked right across the water. Turns out our good friends only paid for 9 holes and had to leave us and it was getting dark so Andrew and I played "speed golf" for the remainder of the holes. Speed golf entailed getting 1 and ONLY 1 practice swing, after which we would yell at each other "HOPE YA LEARNED SOMETHING!" Other rules include both players teeing off at the same time and running down the fairway to find your ball. Oh yeah and the first person to the green first wins. Wins what? I have no idea. We ended up finishing 15 out of 18 holes and had a heck of a fun time in the process. Good times had by Paul. Oh yeah, we got a sweet pool table at my house so we need to hit that up this weekend.
Wednesday, October 15 at 10:32 AM
Who Needs Sleep? Apparently Nobody in Grad School.
Something that surprised me within my first few weeks of Portfolio Center was the insomniac tendencies of the staff. Instructors gave out their home phone numbers and gave enormous windows of time to call - we're talking only 3-5 hours of sleep a night. Yet everyone seemed to be functioning fine (without borrowing caffeine pills from Jesse Spano). I had always heard that "the experts" said while kids definitely need the most sleep, adults should average about 8 hours a night to be at full mental and physical capacity. So...while watching the heartbreaking Cubs loss, I did a little crazy wireless internet research. And although you can't trust everything online (except for message board responses written by PokemonFan847; that guy knows his stuff), I found studies from ABC News and BBC News that answered some questions.
No one has a clear, definitive answer on why we sleep and dream. Sleep needs vary from person to person, but a lot of people seem to agree about the body keeping track of a "sleep bank." If 8 hours is your usual sleeping pattern, 6 hours won't cut it - you will make those 2 hours up somewhere in the near future. But it turns out that anywhere from 6-8 hours of sleep a night is best, depending on the person. A 2002 University of California study showed that regularly sleeping too much or too little actually shortened life expectancy - the highest survival rate (out of 1.1 million people studied) was for people sleeping 7 hours. So it seems to all come down to a personal threshold - whatever you can handle, while being competent when awake, is best.
Anyway, no, I'm not sleeping three hours a night, but I'm on a 6-7 hour sleep pattern that seems to be working well. But I haven't had any of my usual dinosaur dreams lately...
Tuesday, October 14 at 10:00 PM
Instrumental...Rock?
So, Dave, right as I go to do my daily check on dave2n.com, I notice that you posted about Sigur Ros, and on the Indie Rock Channel on Radio@AOL, they're playing Sigur Ros' Untitled 4. I agree with you in that listening to this band is not for everyone, and is also not for anytime. You have to be in the right mood to listen to this stuff, it's the kind of stuff that is playing in the background at a Barnes and Nobles somewhere, and just seeps into your head. I've seen these guys on the very cool show Reverb on HBO, (beware, this site is horrible), and they don't put on a typical rock concert. And if they actually are singing lyrics, or just melodic syllables is still in question. I had always said that if Sigur Ros toured with this other semi popular band, Mogwai that you should defenitely bring a pillow.
These bands are the first "newer" bands that I've listened to that are leaning towards being an instrumental band, with the random humming here and there. And as cool as their instrumental gimmicks might seem (violin bow to play a guitar, what jimmy page?), I would rather see someone play deeper music. Although their vocal lines take a back seat to the instruments, it also seems as if their instrumentals also take a back seat to the idea of their music. Defenitely not for the impatient listener.
at 7:26 AM
Is Sigur Ros Overrated?
You've probably heard of the Icelandic band Sigur Ros. Their popularity soared when Radiohead cited them as an influence and a song was included on the Vanilla Sky soundtrack. Songs usually clock in well over seven minutes and usually fall on the quieter side; concerts are usually held in venues like churches and the audiences are usually dead silent while listening. The lead vocalist sings in a gibberish language called "Hopelandic" and sometimes plays his guitar with a bow. Their latest album was simply called "()" and all the tracks are untitled, on a plain CD with no liner notes.
So, what are these guys? Indie? Pretentious? Trendy? Boring? It's up to you, but I'd side with innovative and creative. I've been listening to them for a while, and while I can say they're not for everyone, their music is very different from anything I've heard before - something that I feel is pretty hard to say in modern times. They're completely radio unfriendly, not falling into any one genre and often just exploring a simple theme for a few minutes. You can download a lot of their songs for free from their website (Untitled #8 and Staraflur being their best-known songs). More than anything, I like their philosophy on music; something that was echoed while studying computer music in college. Why is most popular music in a cookie cutter structure? Intro - verse - bridge - chorus - verse2 - bridge2 - chorus2 - instrumental or guest rapper section - bridge3 - chorus repeated - end. With being conscious of sounding hypocritical, who decided that this structure was the best? Repetition and building on themes are fine - something has to tie the song together. Symphonies used to repeat their first movement before moving on, so that the auidence would get used to the themes. I guess that's the appeal of a band like Sigur Ros to me - individuals going against trend and structure not for commercial success, but for musical success.
Monday, October 13 at 10:32 PM
Soundtrack
I got Apple's new music recording program Soundtrack today. It's basically an insanely simple music recording/editing/looping program that syncs up with other programs like Final Cut Pro. It's no Pro Tools (the industry standard for multitrack recording), but the design and features are thought out well...so I fooled around with it a little today, getting familiar with everything. Reason being - I'm thinking about recording a 5-song demo and pursuing solo acoustic music in Atlanta. I spent most of this weekend writing a new song that is shaping up to be a little different than anything I've written before...a mix of fingerpicking, percussive slaps, plam mutes and strumming patterns scattered across a fairly loose structure. My friend Jeff has agreed to be my "manager" - we'll be working on recording and putting a promo package together within the next month or so. I'm going into it without any rockstar delusions - I just want to play music in front of live audiences again. So now I'm deep in songwriting mode; I ordered John Mayer's Heavier Things and Tenacious D's self-titled album for inspiration, while also listening to David Wilcox, Gavin DeGraw, Jason Mraz and Maroon 5 (who's coming to Atlanta on Wednesday - I might be going). Things are about to get interesting...
Sunday, October 12 at 4:38 PM
Everything is Coming up Milhouse
Any week that starts with getting the new issue of Gamepro is destined for greatness. For my birthday Dave got me a subscription and the first one showed up on Monday. I read it cover to cover just like I did ten years ago and then I went out and bought a video game.
Following in Dave's footsteps I gave in and bought a cell phone. I decided against the crazy-go-nuts phone camera like Jeff's but mine has a few bells and whistles. I immediately did everything I swore I'd never do by listening to each of the ring tones about thrity times each before reluctantly deciding on only one. It's fun having a new toy.
Don and I, and I think maybe Jeff, will be heading down to Jimmy Mad for homecoming this weekend. I have missed bw3's deeply and hope that I can sneak my way into the football game with my faculty ID. Also, I think a viewing of Kill Bill is in order this weekend. I've heard it's pretty rugged what with all of the dismemberment and punching in the face. Oh and I'm definately in for when movie night goes to Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Oh, and I got a job up in DC too. It's been a good week.
Wednesday, October 8 at 10:36 PM
Cabin Fever - 79/100
So last night felt like a flashback to a night (any night) in highschool. Started off with a movie, ended hanging out at the diner, and then home by 10:30.
So this was the first night that "movie night" wasn't at my house. We went to go check out Cabin Fever starring the guy who played "Sean" from Boy Meets World. It turned out to be as good or better than I thought it was going to be going in. I mean, it's a teen horror flick, but a little different than normal. There really wasn't a bad guy, but just an unidentified flesh eating virus, which by the way, really messes people up. It had it's moments, moments being of the scary, disturbing, funny/hilarious, and gross variety. There was a lot of blood in this movie, sometimes a little over the top. There also was this really hilarious part where this guy gets lit on fire and starts running through the woods. Oh, and this scene where this little kid/boy named Dennis, who looks like an ugly girl, does this weird slow motion karate-fu type stuff. Not much I can do to explain that part of the movie, just that, you'll have to see it for yourself.
Overall this was good preparation for the real scarer which is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, comes out October 17th. Just in case you didn't see it in the title, this flick gets a 79 on a scale of 1 to 100; a solid C+. Kept my attention, above average for a teen horror flick, but more likely than not, an entertaining rental.
at 9:08 PM
Is This Thing On?
So my friend got a job at a fire hydrant company, but on his first day of work he was back home in fifteen minutes; said something about not being able to find a parking space...
Tuesday, October 7 at 8:10 AM
Cubbies Goin' Fishin'!
I was fortunate enough to score tickets to last night's Game 5 Braves/Cubs game at Turner Field down here in Atlanta. I ordered them online immediately after the Cubs loss on Saturday - only eight bucks each! They sold out quickly after that - but that didn't stop Chicago native Jeff (new neighbor, not Chin), who was sure he could get a good deal from scalpers. On the slow drive over, he made a small sign on the back of a receipt (the only paper in the car) and stuck it out the window. Sure enough, a nearby driver sold him one for $20. Turner Field is no Camden Yards, but you can tell the Turner money has been put to use there. The staff passed out free red tomahawks as we walked in the doors and watched some sort of crazy free tee-shirt dance party. The game was great - here's hoping for a Cubs vs. Sox series. I did get my picture with a Harry Potter lookalike fan who I was heckling during the game ("Hey Potter - Professor Snape called - you're late for potions class...that's 15 points from Gryffindor!"). Also caught School of Rock this weekend - highly recommended. It's funny, but in a feel-good family sort of way. They used real virtuoso kids for the parts of the students - they rock the house (especially the guitarist and keyboardist).
Sunday, October 5 at 9:33 PM
Oh, The Beefy Goodness
Last night was defenitely a lot of fun. I haven't been to a concert in a while, especially at the 9:30 club. The last show that I saw there was Weezer, a few years ago. Now I'm going to try some weird blogging things, so dave, you might have you fix it if i screw it all up. And feel free to edit anything that I do to put borders on it, etc...So overall it was a real fun night, and time seemed to fly, even when we were stopped halfway between two metro stops for probably half an hour. And seriously, why did that guy have a backpack that large, as to make him look like a ninja turtle. TMNT power. Oh, and I have no explanation for the random beef smell floating through the crowd every few minutes.
Built To Spill - 83
Delusion - 68
Beefy Goodness - 78
Andrew's Review of Jeff's Review of Bottlerocket - 0 BURN!
Saturday, October 4 at 8:35 PM
Where's The Beef?
Went to the Built to Spill show at the 9:30 club last night with Jeff and had a pants rocking good time. The band was a bit more mellow than the stuff I normally listen to but overall I liked them. They definitely had the indie rock band vibe going for them and the lead singer looked like every single math professor I've ever had. The crowd was fairly diverse including such memorable characters as 'guy who couldn't go three seconds without blatently checking someone out' and 'hippie guy with a big backpack that made him look like a teenage mutant ninja turtle'. The bassist in the warmup band (I think they were called Delusion) didn't have a strap for his bass and proceded to sit on the drum riser the whole time making sure he didn't rock anybody out.
By far the most remarkable thing at the show was the persistant smell of beef. We stayed on the left side of the crowd near the bar and every five seconds there was the unmistakable smell of beef. It wasn't an offensive smell but definitely strange and unexpected. This of course led Jeff and I to start yelling beef at random intervals throughout the show. After the show we ran into Brian Ferron (I looked him up in the yearbook Jeff) from Robinson and one of the guys from Earth to Andy, a JMU band. I'm sure Jeff will be writing a bit later to show off the camera/phone pictures he took.
Time for the ratings using the good old scale from 1 to 100:
Built To Spill -72
Delusion - 56
Beef Smell - 83
Jeff's Review of Bottlerocket - 4
at 11:24 AM
This Has All Been Wonderful, Now I'm On My Way
Relocating involves a thought process that I'm just now starting to get used to. My life seems to completely change every time I move somewhere. I moved to Baltimore and Atlanta without knowing practically anyone, but both Teach For America and Portfolio Center have been composed of dedicated, energetic people. Some friends, like the band, will always stay. Okay Samurai could play at Ram Jam tomorrow and it would be just like the old times. But with every move, people have faded in and out of my life. I think about college, when the Cavalier Daily and Dance Marathon took up most of my time. I still talk to only three people from both organizations combined, and those conversations don't happen very often. Teaching in Baltimore seems already distant as I start to make new friends and take classes down here in Atlanta. You can't help but miss aspects of your old life while the new one starts to kick in, no matter how perfect everything seems. You wonder how your old friends would get along with your new friends, and what that says about how much you've changed. Everything from my dinner (cooking for myself?!?) to video-game playing (not much playing anymore) to sleeping (I can stay up and watch Conan) is somehow different. In two years, everything will change again, and these friends I'm making now will go off in different directions. I've decided that it's a good thing in the end. The people who are constants in your life are changing too; you have to make mistakes and get away from your comfort zone. I'm writing this because during the obligatory introductions in my first PC class, we said where we'd been the past five years and where we want to be in the next five. I talked about UVA and TFA, and then said my dream was to work for a kid-focused company like Pixar or Nickelodeon and have a treehouse in my backyard. It's a simple goal that started in college, and I'm not sure that it will change much over the next few years.
Friday, October 3 at 2:42 PM
IS THIS REAL?
no freakin' way this is real...what do you all think? Three armed man? (I found the link off Blacktable.com which my friend Ashley writes for...)
at 10:34 AM
Movie Review
So, there was a movie night two tuesdays ago, and Andrew Werner blessed us by bringing his beloved copy of Bottlerocket on DVD. Movie night turnout was lower than usual, only 3 were in attendance. Nonetheless, I can say, Bottlerocket wasn't the greatest movie, and it wasn't the worst. I did, however, knock another movie off my must-see list. Others on that list include: The Shining, Spinal Tap, Battlefield Earth, and Clockwork Orange to name a few. So Bottlerocket on the scale of 1 to 100, 100 being the best, rated a 74.
Now, I know an email didn't go out about movie night #5 (or #4?) but, I was so bored at work, that I forgot to write one. So, Nick and I rented 2 Fast 2 Furious on the day that it got released. In my opinion it was better than the first one. The race scenes, more interesting, the story line, most interesting, and plot twists, more interesting. Oh, and the girl was hotter too. We cranked up the surround sound and watched the movie at movie-theatre levels. I would recommend this movie.
In music news, I'm going to check out Built to Spill at the 9:30 club tonight. It should be interesting, as I just started listening to them about a week ago. Concert review in the next blog.
hope everything is going well in atlanta for dave, and particle acceleratorland for andrew.
oh, and I just got a camera phone, and haven't gone anywhere cool enough to take cool pictures. although at my desk i have 6/10 burker king simpsons characters. but, check out my homey and his new zip zap ride.
at 8:12 AM
Okay Samurai Multimedia is Dave Werner's personal site. I'm currently working at Minor Studios in San Francisco. Thanks for visiting! (more...)
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