More illustration work...this one's for the local AIGA. Here it is in action.
Wednesday, August 31 at 8:01 PM
Happy 24th Birthday Andrew
Tuesday, August 30 at 9:00 AM
A quick illustration of "time" for Speak Up's Word It...submit your own designs too! In other news, I cleaned up the Cardboard Box a little. And Jeff Ma recently launched his new site, Don't Be A Macho Man. Enjoy.
Sunday, August 28 at 12:43 PM
Okay Samurai Concert Countdown
#5: King's Ridge Pool Party, 1998
Mosquito came up on the playlist today and I thought, hey, Okay Samurai has been apart long enough now for nostalgic VH1-style countdowns. So for every day through Friday, we'll be counting down the top five OKS concerts of all time. Any show from our ten years together is fair game, from Janine Mason's 16th birthday party to the final Mainstreet show at JMU. Dave & Russ performances, solo acoustic shows and WuTang Killa Beez concerts with Ferenczy won't count...only Don + Andrew + Dave + Asian Bassist shows do. It was relatively easy to pick these out; they remain as some of my favorite memories.
First up was the King's Ridge Pool Party from 1998. My girlfriend's family at the time was fairly involved with the local swimming pool across the street. They asked us to play a pool party concert to kick off the summer. We agreed, got a great turnout, and ended up playing two sets that lasted well into the night. Some of the highlights, if I remember correctly:
*Don's head was shaved, Eugene's glasses kept on shifting out of place from sweat, and Andrew and I had dyed our hair blond. The band was still called "Second Nature".
*We waited to start playing a song until a kid jumped off the high dive. When he hit the water, Andrew nailed the cymbals and we began.
*During the end of Third, I took my electric guitar and started rolling around on the ground while playing the heavily distorted ending. Don's Dad didn't like that very much.
*In the video of the performance, there's a great scene where a kid walks in front of the camera. When he realizes it's on, his eyes become as wide as a deer in headlights and he jumps out of the way.
*We played one of our longest versions of Hammock; everyone got a solo. When Eugene started his, Andrew left and jumped in the pool.
*Rusty Noesner must have done something funny.
*Carol Simpson came up and helped sing the song she wrote, Chlorine Girl.
The concert ended up being a family-friendly event: the neighborhood kids and their parents alike had a great time. Playing outside with a noise permit is always guaranteed fun. This concert barely beats out Ram Jam 1997, which would probably be #6 on the list, but got edged out simply because this was longer and we didn't have to share the bill with Bucket of Monkey or those two white kids who thought they could rap.
(Tomorrow: The samurai go to the Fairfax Government Center to talk business...)
#4: Wakefield CD Release, 1994
During our last year of high school together, we recorded a CD at Rolling Hills Recording Studios in nearby Damascus, Maryland. It was a great experience; hearing our basement practice sessions realized as studio-quality tracks was extremely satisfying. CD technology wasn't all that old, and most indie / smaller bands were still using the more cost-effective solution of cassette tapes. We pooled our resources together (thanks, Washington Post paper route) and went for it.
The band was never too business-savvy, but we wanted to throw something together for our CD release. Problem was, there weren't many places to play a gig in good ol' Fairfax, Virginia. Someone got the idea to call the Government Center and ask them if we could book a public venue. Before long, we were sitting in a posh boardroom with leather swivel chairs. A lady named Michelle Chapman Campbell was our contact, who was in charge of a county-sponsored (aka drug and alcohol-free) entertainment series called "The Zone". After some brainstorming, we decided to hold a full-fledged concert in the Wakefield Recreation Center gymnasium, with our friends the Boys of Skabinson and a solo act named Clint Coo opening the show (MCC said he was good). Thus the Wakefield CD Release Party at the Zone was born.
The turnout was unbelievable. Apparently "The Zone" had a decent marketing budget and the show was mentioned on the radio and in flyers around town. We played on a multi-tiered stage with an awesome backdrop of large windows looking out to a forest. The Boys of Skabinson (our high school was called "Robinson"...oh, those clever ska cats) rocked the place, and I remember lead singer Adam Crowley rocking out on the kazoo for one song. Clint Coo was...good at playing Duncan Sheik covers...but he brought in a small non-Robinson crowd. And then it was our turn, and we played straight through a full set. Everyone in the audience got neon glowing bracelets upon arrival. I can still remember looking into this dark sea of green and pink lights from the stage and thinking that this was the coolest I had ever felt. The show ended with our friend Dave Broussard and I wearing jumpsuits and doing rock versions of the Beastie Boys' No Sleep Til Brooklyn and Mase's Feel So Good.
Our future together in college was uncertain, but making the CD and throwing a release party capped off our high school days well. I've always disliked the business aspect of booking / promotion, but it somehow clicked this time around. In the end, we were just four high school kids spinning around in government-owned boardroom swivel chairs.
(Tomorrow: The bloodiest OKS concert ever...)
#3: Theta Chi Survivor
When starting my first year at UVA, I became fast friends with a guy named Russ Jenkins two doors down in the dorm. He had an acoustic guitar in hopes of learning how to play, and I, samurailess, wanted someone to rock out with. So we would sit in the hallway or out on the front stoop at night and play Dave Matthews Band songs together. If a girl walked by, we stopped whatever we were playing and immediately jumped into Crash Into Me. The ladies liked that. And we were shallow like that.
Anyway, fast forward two years, and Russ was now a brother at Theta Chi. At this point "Dave and Russ" had played a few acoustic shows together around Charlottesville, and we were still close friends...now we practiced guitar on the Theta Chi front deck instead of the dorm hallways. Russ was also the new event coordinator for his frat, and booked Okay Samurai for their massively hyped "Survivor" theme party. This was our first frat party, at UVA no less...everyone was very excited.
They went all-out with the theme: tiki torches, sand-covered floors, palm trees and palm fronds, and a kiddie pool filled with live goldfish...which the brothers would grab up and eat whole (usually followed by a blur of high-fives). We began the first of our two sets close to 11PM, and everyone's energy was through the roof. The acoustics of the room weren't that great, so everything seemed louder than usual. We did a cover of California Love and some of my female friends came up on the stage and started dancing with Eugene and Don. We ended the first set a little after midnight, and I took a deep breath and suddenly felt really sick. I could taste blood in the back of my throat from singing so loud; my voice was strained. As we got off the stage to head up to Russ's room for a break, Andrew revealed his blood-covered hands. He had been playing so hard that the friction from the wooden drumsticks was rubbing the skin off his hands. While we walked upstairs, I was uncertain that we'd be able to pull off a second set.
It turned out, in a semi-cliched way, that we persevered through the Survivor party. I silently gulped down bottle after bottle of water and regained my voice. Andrew wrapped duct tape around his hands as makeshift bandages. That's right, my little brother took a roll of duct tape and looped it around his bleeding palms in order to play more. Pretty soon we were back down on stage, churning out a heavily distorted electric rock version of Nsync's Bye Bye Bye (complete with Justin Timberlake dance moves, of course). When we finished, something new happened to us: ENCORE. ENCORE. ENCORE. This was our first encore; we didn't expect it and didn't know what to play. Don began the chords to Sweet Home Alabama, the quintessential southern frat favorite, and the crowd went crazy. We had never played the song together before as a full band, but all of us caught on to the simple three-chord progression pretty quickly and made it through. And hey, if we didn't, everyone was trashed out of their minds on beer and goldfish anyway.
(Tomorrow: Crowd surfing in a southern Virginia barn...)
#2: KA Melrose, 2001
Fraternities at JMU had a tradition of renting a barn 20 minutes outside of campus for huge BYOB parties. Buses would bring people back and forth from the event, so everyone was usually pretty toasted by the time they made it through the barn doors. This tradition was known as Melrose, and KA asked us to perform at theirs in 2001. Upon first walking into the barn one Saturday afternoon to set things up, I couldn't believe how cool of a venue it was. An enormous sawdust-covered floor. Several stairways that led up to a long balcony with a half-broken piano in the corner. Lots of smaller, secluded rooms connected to the main one. A large outside deck. It was the perfect open atmosphere for general debauchery.
The stage that we were playing on was a different story. It was long and narrow, giving us absolutely no depth. We looked like the band at Chuck E. Cheese, where all the animatronic characters are lined up in a row (it's usually nice to have the ability to see your bandmates for the purposes of starting and ending songs in unison). But whatever qualms we had about the stage disappeared that night when the buses starting pouring people in, creating a steady flow of newcomers that never stopped. The place was saturated with drunken college kids, a captive audience who wanted their pants rocked off.
And rock pants off we did. As soon as we started playing, girls flooded the stage...it was like straight out of a movie. They were dancing with us, singing with us, picking up a tambourine or drumstick and playing with us, and pretty much making the crowd even crazier. One girl in particular, forever known as "blue shirt girl", would pat us on the back with the rhythm of the music. The only problem was that she had no rhythm whatsoever. Jeff said he had a hard time keeping in time with this intoxicated, off-tempo metronome pounding his back.
My friend from a band called the Bureau, Jordan Brown, came down for the show, and played lead guitar on an extended version of Back To Blues. He couldn't believe the surrounding insanity either, and yelled at Andrew over the music "THIS IS SO (expletive) AWESOME!" We also did a rock version of the Dixie Chicks' Ready To Run, where the cowboy hat I put on my head was quickly snatched up and worn by several of the onstage dancers. Crowd surfing was omnipresent. I grabbed the wireless mic, ran through the crowd, up the stairs and onto the balcony to sing the chorus of 718 from above. So many things could have gone wrong...beer spilling on instruments or amps, people trying to take over the mic, fights breaking out...but miraculously, none of these things happened (I even got my cowboy hat back!) We played through two insane, full sets. So this is what it must be like to be a rockstar, I thought. It was a feeling that has never quite been matched since.
(Tomorrow: the countdown ends with the best birthday celebration ever...)
#1: Mainstreet, 2002
Considering all of the expenses over the years, we probably lost money being in a band. We were never doing it to "make it big" or sign with a label. For me, Okay Samurai was always an excuse to hang out with my best friends while writing, recording, and playing songs. I used to be a little kid singing into his Radio Shack tape recorder, daydreaming about being in the spotlight like any other 7-year-old. In Okay Samurai, I was fortunate enough to play out that dream many times. I miss performing so badly...I've tried to start things on my own, but it's never worked out without my fellow samurai. Maybe it's better that way.
The best concert we ever played, no question about it, was our first show at Mainstreet Bar and Grille at James Madison University on February 27, 2002.
Mainstreet was a deep venue with a great sound and lighting system. JMU and UVA aren't too far apart, so a large group of my friends made the drive down for the show. My girlfriend at the time borrowed a video camera and ended up taping the entire concert...I'll put some highlights online one day (and make Jeff Chin a DVD because he's been asking me for it for three years now). Don's future (and still current) girlfriend was even there, dancing on the speakers. The most important person in the audience that night, however, was our first bass player, Eugene Jung. Eugena was right in the front, rocking along the entire time.
We were headlining the show, and asked our friends Luck Be A Lady to open. They did an excellent job and got the crowd going strong. After a short break and the usual Okay Samurai backstage prayer session ("Lord, may we rock some freakin' pants off tonight"), we took the stage. The place was packed. The lights went down, and Don's guitar started emitting feedback through his Half Stack before we blasted into a full hour and a half of music. We had practiced this set for a month in preparation, and threw in everything we had ever wanted to do. Andrew wore a giant sombrero during South of the Border. Jeff played electric and I played bass for the premiere of Disregard the Trip on That. Dave Broussard repeated his performance from our high school CD release party by joining us for No Sleep Til Brooklyn. I played a fire extinguisher in Mosquito. We were constantly jumping through a thick, surreal atmosphere of multicolored lights and fog. We mixed the songs Angel in the Centerfold and Take the Money and Run together as one. A few things went wrong - both Don and Jeff's guitar straps broke during the concert (too much rocking out tends to do that) - but our friend Ben Markowitz was on hand to quickly fix them up.
At midnight, people in the audience immediately began to hold up "Happy Birthday Dave" signs. It was my 22nd birthday, and they had me completely surprised. Don led a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday, I chugged a beer, and we went straight into Southern Cross. It was a great moment. We ended the concert with an encore, playing Springsteen's Glory Days with a little Born in the USA thrown in for good measure. When the lights went up, it took a while for reality to sink back in. As we were loading equipment back into our cars at 1AM, everyone was still smiling and laughing. We played a couple of more concerts after that, but Mainstreet really was the single best experience we had collectively as Okay Samurai.
Thank you so much for all the responses from this week's countdown; it was entertaining to put together and hopefully not completely self-serving. Being the only samurai outside of DC, I get nostalgic about these things pretty quickly and want to write stuff down before forgetting any details...these are our war stories.
Friday, August 26 at 9:00 AM
Concert Countdown Week: #1 - Mainstreet, 2002
Considering all of the expenses over the years, we probably lost money being in a band. We were never doing it to "make it big" or sign with a label. For me, Okay Samurai was always an excuse to hang out with my best friends while writing, recording, and playing songs. I used to be a little kid singing into his Radio Shack tape recorder, daydreaming about being in the spotlight like any other 7-year-old. In Okay Samurai, I was fortunate enough to play out that dream many times. I miss performing so badly...I've tried to start things on my own, but it's never worked out without my fellow samurai. Maybe it's better that way.
The best concert we ever played, no question about it, was our first show at Mainstreet Bar and Grille at James Madison University on February 27, 2002.
Mainstreet was a deep venue with a great sound and lighting system. JMU and UVA aren't too far apart, so a large group of my friends made the drive down for the show. My girlfriend at the time borrowed a video camera and ended up taping the entire concert...I'll put some highlights online one day (and make Jeff Chin a DVD because he's been asking me for it for three years now). Don's future (and still current) girlfriend was even there, dancing on the speakers. The most important person in the audience that night, however, was our first bass player, Eugene Jung. Eugena was right in the front, rocking along the entire time.
We were headlining the show, and asked our friends Luck Be A Lady to open. They did an excellent job and got the crowd going strong. After a short break and the usual Okay Samurai backstage prayer session ("Lord, may we rock some freakin' pants off tonight"), we took the stage. The place was packed. The lights went down, and Don's guitar started emitting feedback through his Half Stack before we blasted into a full hour and a half of music. We had practiced this set for a month in preparation, and threw in everything we had ever wanted to do. Andrew wore a giant sombrero during South of the Border. Jeff played electric and I played bass for the premiere of Disregard the Trip on That. Dave Broussard repeated his performance from our high school CD release party by joining us for No Sleep Til Brooklyn. I played a fire extinguisher in Mosquito. We were constantly jumping through a thick, surreal atmosphere of multicolored lights and fog. We mixed the songs Angel in the Centerfold and Take the Money and Run together as one. A few things went wrong - both Don and Jeff's guitar straps broke during the concert (too much rocking out tends to do that) - but our friend Ben Markowitz was on hand to quickly fix them up.
At midnight, people in the audience immediately began to hold up "Happy Birthday Dave" signs. It was my 22nd birthday, and they had me completely surprised. Don led a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday, I chugged a beer, and we went straight into Southern Cross. It was a great moment. We ended the concert with an encore, playing Springsteen's Glory Days with a little Born in the USA thrown in for good measure. When the lights went up, it took a while for reality to sink back in. As we were loading equipment back into our cars at 1AM, everyone was still smiling and laughing. We played a couple of more concerts after that, but Mainstreet really was the single best experience we had collectively as Okay Samurai.
Thank you so much for all the responses from this week's countdown; it was entertaining to put together and hopefully not completely self-serving. Being the only samurai outside of DC, I get nostalgic about these things pretty quickly and want to write stuff down before forgetting any details...these are our war stories.
Thursday, August 25 at 9:00 PM
Concert Countdown Week: #2 - KA Melrose, 2001
Fraternities at JMU had a tradition of renting a barn 20 minutes outside of campus for huge BYOB parties. Buses would bring people back and forth from the event, so everyone was usually pretty toasted by the time they made it through the barn doors. This tradition was known as Melrose, and KA asked us to perform at theirs in 2001. Upon first walking into the barn one Saturday afternoon to set things up, I couldn't believe how cool of a venue it was. An enormous sawdust-covered floor. Several stairways that led up to a long balcony with a half-broken piano in the corner. Lots of smaller, secluded rooms connected to the main one. A large outside deck. It was the perfect open atmosphere for general debauchery.
The stage that we were playing on was a different story. It was long and narrow, giving us absolutely no depth. We looked like the band at Chuck E. Cheese, where all the animatronic characters are lined up in a row (it's usually nice to have the ability to see your bandmates for the purposes of starting and ending songs in unison). But whatever qualms we had about the stage disappeared that night when the buses starting pouring people in, creating a steady flow of newcomers that never stopped. The place was saturated with drunken college kids, a captive audience who wanted their pants rocked off.
And rock pants off we did. As soon as we started playing, girls flooded the stage...it was like straight out of a movie. They were dancing with us, singing with us, picking up a tambourine or drumstick and playing with us, and pretty much making the crowd even crazier. One girl in particular, forever known as "blue shirt girl", would pat us on the back with the rhythm of the music. The only problem was that she had no rhythm whatsoever. Jeff said he had a hard time keeping in time with this intoxicated, off-tempo metronome pounding his back.
My friend from a band called the Bureau, Jordan Brown, came down for the show, and played lead guitar on an extended version of Back To Blues. He couldn't believe the surrounding insanity either, and yelled at Andrew over the music "THIS IS SO (expletive) AWESOME!" We also did a rock version of the Dixie Chicks' Ready To Run, where the cowboy hat I put on my head was quickly snatched up and worn by several of the onstage dancers. Crowd surfing was omnipresent. I grabbed the wireless mic, ran through the crowd, up the stairs and onto the balcony to sing the chorus of 718 from above. So many things could have gone wrong...beer spilling on instruments or amps, people trying to take over the mic, fights breaking out...but miraculously, none of these things happened (I even got my cowboy hat back!) We played through two insane, full sets. So this is what it must be like to be a rockstar, I thought. It was a feeling that has never quite been matched since.
(Tomorrow: the countdown ends with the best birthday celebration ever...)
Wednesday, August 24 at 9:00 PM
Concert Countdown Week: #3 - Theta Chi Survivor, 2000
When starting my first year at UVA, I became fast friends with a guy named Russ Jenkins two doors down in the dorm. He had an acoustic guitar in hopes of learning how to play, and I, samurailess, wanted someone to rock out with. So we would sit in the hallway or out on the front stoop at night and play Dave Matthews Band songs together. If a girl walked by, we stopped whatever we were playing and immediately jumped into Crash Into Me. The ladies liked that. And we were shallow like that.Anyway, fast forward two years, and Russ was now a brother at Theta Chi. At this point "Dave and Russ" had played a few acoustic shows together around Charlottesville, and we were still close friends...now we practiced guitar on the Theta Chi front deck instead of the dorm hallways. Russ was also the new event coordinator for his frat, and booked Okay Samurai for their massively hyped "Survivor" theme party. This was our first frat party, at UVA no less...everyone was very excited.
They went all-out with the theme: tiki torches, sand-covered floors, palm trees and palm fronds, and a kiddie pool filled with live goldfish...which the brothers would grab up and eat whole (usually followed by a blur of high-fives). We began the first of our two sets close to 11PM, and everyone's energy was through the roof. The acoustics of the room weren't that great, so everything seemed louder than usual. We did a cover of California Love and some of my female friends came up on the stage and started dancing with Eugene and Don. We ended the first set a little after midnight, and I took a deep breath and suddenly felt really sick. I could taste blood in the back of my throat from singing so loud; my voice was strained. As we got off the stage to head up to Russ's room for a break, Andrew revealed his blood-covered hands. He had been playing so hard that the friction from the wooden drumsticks was rubbing the skin off his hands. While we walked upstairs, I was uncertain that we'd be able to pull off a second set.
It turned out, in a semi-cliched way, that we persevered through the Survivor party. I silently gulped down bottle after bottle of water and regained my voice. Andrew wrapped duct tape around his hands as makeshift bandages. That's right, my little brother took a roll of duct tape and looped it around his bleeding palms in order to play more. Pretty soon we were back down on stage, churning out a heavily distorted electric rock version of Nsync's Bye Bye Bye (complete with Justin Timberlake dance moves, of course). When we finished, something new happened to us: ENCORE. ENCORE. ENCORE. This was our first encore; we didn't expect it and didn't know what to play. Don began the chords to Sweet Home Alabama, the quintessential southern frat favorite, and the crowd went crazy. We had never played the song together before as a full band, but all of us caught on to the simple three-chord progression pretty quickly and made it through. And hey, if we didn't, everyone was trashed out of their minds on beer and goldfish anyway.
(Tomorrow: Crowd surfing in a southern Virginia barn...)
Tuesday, August 23 at 9:00 PM
Concert Countdown Week: #4 - Wakefield CD Release, 1998
(Quick side note: the full trailer for Harry Potter 4 has been leaked. Check it out here).
During our last year of high school together, we recorded a CD at Rolling Hills Recording Studios in nearby Damascus, Maryland. It was a great experience; hearing our basement practice sessions realized as studio-quality tracks was extremely satisfying. CD technology wasn't all that old, and most indie / smaller bands were still using the more cost-effective solution of cassette tapes. We pooled our resources together (thanks, Washington Post paper route) and went for it.
The band was never too business-savvy, but we wanted to throw something together for our CD release. Problem was, there weren't many places to play a gig in good ol' Fairfax, Virginia. Someone got the idea to call the Government Center and ask them if we could book a public venue. Before long, we were sitting in a posh boardroom with leather swivel chairs. A lady named Michelle Chapman Campbell was our contact, who was in charge of a county-sponsored (aka drug and alcohol-free) entertainment series called "The Zone". After some brainstorming, we decided to hold a full-fledged concert in the Wakefield Recreation Center gymnasium, with our friends the Boys of Skabinson and a solo act named Clint Coo opening the show (MCC said he was good). Thus the Wakefield CD Release Party at the Zone was born.
The turnout was unbelievable. Apparently "The Zone" had a decent marketing budget and the show was mentioned on the radio and in flyers around town. We played on a multi-tiered stage with an awesome backdrop of large windows looking out to a forest. The Boys of Skabinson (our high school was called "Robinson"...oh, those clever ska cats) rocked the place, and I remember lead singer Adam Crowley rocking out on the kazoo for one song. Clint Coo was...good at playing Duncan Sheik covers...but he brought in a small non-Robinson crowd. And then it was our turn, and we played straight through a full set. Everyone in the audience got neon glowing bracelets upon arrival. I can still remember looking into this dark sea of green and pink lights from the stage and thinking that this was the coolest I had ever felt. The show ended with our friend Dave Broussard and I wearing jumpsuits and doing rock versions of the Beastie Boys' No Sleep Til Brooklyn and Mase's Feel So Good.
Our future together in college was uncertain, but making the CD and throwing a release party capped off our high school days well. I've always disliked the business aspect of booking / promotion, but it somehow clicked this time around. In the end, we were just four high school kids spinning around in government-owned boardroom swivel chairs.
(Tomorrow: The bloodiest OKS concert ever...)
Monday, August 22 at 9:00 PM
Concert Countdown Week: #5 - King's Ridge Pool Party, 1998
Mosquito came up on the playlist today and I thought, hey, Okay Samurai has been apart long enough now for nostalgic VH1-style countdowns. So for every day through Friday, we'll be counting down the top five OKS concerts of all time. Any show from our ten years together is fair game, from Janine Mason's 16th birthday party to the final Mainstreet show at JMU. Dave & Russ performances, solo acoustic shows and WuTang Killa Beez concerts with Ferenczy won't count...only Don + Andrew + Dave + Asian Bassist shows do. It was relatively easy to pick these out; they remain as some of my favorite memories.First up was the King's Ridge Pool Party from 1998. My girlfriend's family at the time was fairly involved with the local swimming pool across the street. They asked us to play a pool party concert to kick off the summer. We agreed, got a great turnout, and ended up playing two sets that lasted well into the night. Some of the highlights, if I remember correctly:
*Don's head was shaved, Eugene's glasses kept on shifting out of place from sweat, and Andrew and I had dyed our hair blond. The band was still called "Second Nature".
*We waited to start playing a song until a kid jumped off the high dive. When he hit the water, Andrew nailed the cymbals and we began.
*During the end of Third, I took my electric guitar and started rolling around on the ground while playing the heavily distorted ending. Don's Dad didn't like that very much.
*In the video of the performance, there's a great scene where a kid walks in front of the camera. When he realizes it's on, his eyes become as wide as a deer in headlights and he jumps out of the way.
*We played one of our longest versions of Hammock; everyone got a solo. When Eugene started his, Andrew left and jumped in the pool.
*Rusty Noesner must have done something funny.
*Carol Simpson came up and helped sing the song she wrote, Chlorine Girl.
The concert ended up being a family-friendly event: the neighborhood kids and their parents alike had a great time. Playing outside with a noise permit is always guaranteed fun. This concert barely beats out Ram Jam 1997, which would probably be #6 on the list, but got edged out simply because this was longer and we didn't have to share the bill with Bucket of Monkey or those two white kids who thought they could rap.
(Tomorrow: The samurai go to the Fairfax Government Center to talk business...)
Sunday, August 21 at 9:00 PM
Speeches and Essays
I never took any drama classes growing up because every student thought he or she would be the next Jim Carrey in 7th grade (Teacher: "Mike Lee, can you tell us what an adverb is?" Mike: "Allllll righty then!"). Giving speeches, however, has always been a lot of fun. One day I hope to be perceived cool enough to give speeches at random design symposiums, preferably with lots of pyrotechnics. But for now, here's looking back at some speeches of yesteryear:
Cow and Pig, 5th grade
I ran for Student Government President in elementary school, and did a speech using Cow and Pig puppets arguing over what made a good candidate. There were a lot of fights and broken accents if I remember correctly. Too bad Suzanne Wilson got to speak after me and promised free pizza on field day...she won. I was devestated...this was my first big defeat. I left school for most of the day and came back with a baseball hat covering my face. AND WE NEVER GOT FREE PIZZA THE NEXT YEAR. But hey, I'm not bitter.
AP English Essay, 12th grade
Not really a speech, but it's in a similar vein. For the final part of this insanely long test, we were given a free response essay based on a book of our choosing. The vague question was something boring like "The seasons change with each falling leaf, each flake of snow, and each blooming flower. Describe a book where a particular event causes dramatic change; change for the characters, environment, plot, etc. Cite specific examples and determine the overall impact of the change." Maybe I should have followed my teacher's advice and picked Macbeth, Catch 22 or The Grapes of Wrath. Instead, I chose Jurassic Park and wrote about how dinosaurs trying to devour humans was indeed a dramatic change...and somehow got a perfect score of a 5.
Straight Up Dance Marathon, Fall 2000
For my last year as Entertainment Chair for UVA's Dance Marathon, I played a customized rendition of Paula Abdul's Straight Up on guitar for the initial interest meeting. The signup numbers that night for our committee, no joke, totaled roughly 6 guys and 64 girls. That was a fun year...
Cavalier Daily Goodbye, Spring 2002
Held in the Rotunda's dome room at UVA, I started off with a heavily cliched speech but then pretended to find a note taped to the podium. UVA has a fascination with secret societies, so I claimed it was from the most-secretive 7 society, and that there was an envelope under the 7th chair in the 7th row of the room (like they usually do). Some kid realized it was his seat and brought the envelope up. Then it was just a laundry list giving thanks to friends on the staff and revealing their darkest secrets, like Brian Maxwell's special tattoo.
Ride or Die, Summer 2002
This was the closing speech for our Teach For America summer school staff before we left C.I.S 22 in the Bronx. Basically it revolved around all the pranks I had pulled that summer, and how they eventually gave me a taste of my own medicine. An advisor had quoted Tupac in her parting words, so it was only fitting to end mine with "Ride or die, what you gonna do? PEACE." This is how I think all speeches should end; with a hard-hitting rap lyric and an emphatic PEACE. Imagine if the State of the Union ended like that. Bush would be all like "And when the cops came by, me and Dre stood next to a burned down house. PEACE WE OUT."
Friday, August 19 at 12:10 AM
Now I Ain't Sayin' She A Gold Digger
Wednesday, August 17 at 4:22 PM
Sugar Withdrawal
For the first time in recent memory, I didn't buy Coke at the grocery store today. In fact, the conveyer belt at Publix was a very un-Dave collection, meaning that there were no cartoon mascots and neon marshmallows on the food packaging. Celery made its first appearance in the cart today, which I'm told is a vegetable. Why the recent health kick? Well, while biting into a Wendy's Monterey Jack Bacon Ranch Cheeseburger during the long drive back yesterday, I came to the realization that my eating habits haven't always been the healthiest. I've always tried to cut corners on food, buying whatever is cheapest and easiest to prepare. So I'm taking a conscious break from soda and fast food for the rest of the quarter, and we'll see where it goes from there.
Happy Birthday to Jeff Chin!
Monday, August 15 at 12:01 PM
Save The Last Dance
Rachel and Coire's wedding was great; it was good to catch up with so many old college friends like Jen, Joanna, Kim, Katisha, Laura Dean the Math Machine, Blair, Greg (who says he runs into Andrew in DC a lot) and Edmer...although I'm a little pooped after 20+ hours of driving this weekend. Not even Yo-Yo Ma rocking out on shuffle play can keep your spirits high for that long.
Sunday, August 14 at 7:41 PM
Interactive
There is often a certain level of apprehension when it comes to the technical details of interactive work. Me, I hate coding. I understand the basics of stuff like CSS or Actionscript and can hack away at it, but in a perfect world we wouldn't have to speak another language to make an animation or website do what we want. We're not there yet. But where we are is at a time where technology can barely keep up with itself. Something faster, smaller, louder and cooler is created every day.
At Portfolio Center, you can sense the shift towards interactive coming. Print won't die. Traditions die hard, and there will always be a need for messages communicated on paper. But the great thing is that the transition from print to interactive is not as big a chasm as many seem to think. It's like taking a poster and saying okay, what if I added music to this? What if it moved? What if you could interact with it somehow? What if there were hidden secrets or rewards from that interaction? As a kid of the Nintendo generation, that sounds pretty exciting to me.
But the perceived technical details get in the way. After Effects is really just Photoshop with a timeline. Flash is just After Effects with interaction. Making a personal website is easier than ever thanks to stuff like Blogger, and you could learn the basics of CSS in a day. My knowledge of all these things is average at best, yet the general perception at school is that I'm tech savvy, which is probably only due to the fact that there are so few people currently interested in this stuff at PC. But the truth is that I've only known Flash and After Effects for a year, spend less time on my computer now than when I first started school, and...gasp...don't even own an iPod.
Someone I respect very much recently said In print today, you can become a rockstar. In interactive today, you can become a pioneer. No matter what way you slice it, it's an exciting time to be a designer, but there isn't an enormous barrier to overcome between the rules of a print and interactive designer. Actually, these distinguishing labels are irrelevant. I just enjoy doing anything creative; if it's a logo, wine bottle, movie, blog entry, song, chair, treasure map, or something entirely new and challenging, I'll be happy regardless.
Wednesday, August 10 at 9:51 PM
portfoliocenter.com Is Live!
The good folks at Iconologic have put up a new Portfolio Center website, and it turned out great...this is not your typical grad school site. It represents the school well and has a lot of dynamic stuff like a blog, an expansive student gallery, and cool mini-videos. I got to help out a little with the Why PC? page. The New York movies and some chair sketches are also highlighted, as well as interviews with industry professionals by old roommate Howard and current roommate Zack. Way to go Iconologic; you nailed it.
Tuesday, August 9 at 6:54 PM
Banksy is the Man
Banksy is an insanely creative guy and a breath of fresh air in a celebrity-driven world. He's been referred to as an "art terrorist", a secretive London-based artist who often uses spraypaint (often illegally) to make his voice heard. Recently he finished nine paintings that look like holes in Israel's controversial West Bank concrete wall while avoiding gunfire from soliders. This is the same guy who hung fake works of art in major museums that went undetected for days and spray-painted cows and pigs for a secret exhibition.
The quarter is just about halfway done. This week I'm showing scenes from Cadence of Seasons at the AIGA Interactive Open Mic Night and leaving on Friday for college friends Rachel Garcia and Coire Maranzano's wedding in Virginia.
Monday, August 8 at 5:03 PM
Gustavo Hugs A Glass
Here's a short two minute movie for Ashley and Elizabeth's Birthday this weekend at Loca Luna. Don, you especially need to watch this because Ashley was your sister Carol's roommate at UVA. Small world.
Sunday, August 7 at 7:34 AM
Thursday Motivation
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
- George Bernard Shaw
The Genesis Society, one of the million secret societies at UVA, delivered a cake for the Dance Marathon founders during our third year together. There were personalized paper quotes stuffed into the cake for each of us, and that was the one that they decided fit me. It's been taped to my wall ever since.
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
- Marianne Williamson
This quote has been repeated by Nelson Mandela, Hank, Dr. Phil and that kid from Coach Carter so you know something's up. The potential for great things is present in all of us, not just celebrities, world leaders, or Samuel L. Jackson.
"A samurai with no group and no horse is not a samurai at all."
- The Hagakure, a Samurai Handbook
Well crap.
Wednesday, August 3 at 9:16 PM
Design Matters
Hank is giving some speech in Nashville later this week, and I'm helping out with a few visual aids. Here's the intro video, which was thrown together over the span of an hour last night. I thought it turned out pretty cool for a rush job. Also, my friend Katie (who sat diagonally across from me in the Pentagram basement) recently started a blog, check it out. Oh, and last night Jeff and I celebrated our asian heritage by shopping at a 99 Ranch Market and having dinner at Pho Hoa Noodle Soup #36, and I stocked up on Pocky.
Tuesday, August 2 at 9:55 AM
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