blue velcro

Abandoned

2008-12-06T10:34:00.000-08:00

If you were one of the five or ten people who semi-regularly followed my blog, you've surely noticed by now that I've stopped updating it. I feel a little guilty about becoming deadweight on other people's blogrolls (hi Eric), but what can I say.

If you remain at all curious about my internet presence, it has pretty much shifted to my flickr page recently.

I checked the stats and it looks like my blog, despite its moribund status, still gets an average of about 10 hits per day. By far, most visitors come here by searching google images for "container ship wrecks" or some variation on that phrase, which leads them to this post, which isn't really even a post, but just a quickie link to someone else's site. But I suppose they'll find what they came looking for. Also, a couple of posts I've written about legitimately free fonts seem to attract lots of folks looking for pirated fonts, but everybody wants something for nothing, right?

I sincerely hope the people who landed here after googling "blue muscle bullet", "velcrow blow up things", and "ladies high heels for men" eventually found what they were looking for.

If you're in search of some websurfing entertainment, allow me to recommend a recently discovered favorite of mine, the new shelton wet/dry, which is updated every friday with an international buffet of visual non sequiturs, pseudo-science, outrageous financial scandals, bizarre pop cultural detritus, crime trends, taxidermy, and hipster sleaze.

Staking a claim to a name

2008-05-29T23:11:00.000-07:00

FIRST CLASS FOREVER is a new magazine about:

interesting queer people and the things that they do

creative queer people and the things that they make

smart queer people and the things that they think about

express/local

issue #1: CONTRADICTION
coming soon

Notes on New York

2008-05-20T23:06:00.000-07:00

I'm making a tradition out of traveling for my birthday, after a few consecutive years of high expectations followed by disappointing celebrations. Last year was a brief visit to Southern California to visit my brothers, with a couple days of sightseeing in Los Angeles. As soon as I got back I began making plans for New York, which I hadn't seen since 1994.

I was prepared to shell out for a stay in a hotel — but hooray for internet social networking, which, long story short, got me an invitation to stay in Brooklyn. Joshua was my gracious host, knowledgable tour guide, and subway navigator for eight days in the city. Thanks Joshua!

In no particular order:

- I relaxed my drinking ban and had a beer at the Dugout, and later at Ty's, where I ran into a couple of guys I recognized from Portland (small world, etc). Other bars visited: the Eagle (surprisingly low-key), the Cock (good DJ, but perhaps the $5 cover was to blame for the lack of patrons?), Nowhere ("Bear Essentials" drew a good Tuesday night crowd), and the Phoenix (chill place with a nice make-out bench).

- I got a couple of invitations (more internet social networking) to the Assume Vivid Astro Focus opening party at Deitch Projects, but couldn't make it, which was fine I suppose, since I didn't have an appropriate outfit to wear anyway. Instead I wound up at a crowded party at a fancy Soho loft which I was told was owned by the owner of Gawker. I met Paul, who was friendly, but most of the other people there seemed pretty boring, and since it was too loud to start up a smalltalk conversation with strangers, I was unable to test the assumption.

- Joshua and I rode the train upstate to Dia:Beacon, an old Nabisco factory converted into a museum which is installed with extravagantly large and very highbrow art. A museum visitor warned Joshua about entering one of the gargantuan Richard Serra sculptures, "don't bother, there's nothing in there." We went inside anyway:

If there is such a thing as extravagant minimalism, this is the place for it. Mostly, it left me cold, but I did enjoy the gallery of Bernd and Hilla Becher photographs, and the exhibit of creepy/sexy Louise Bourgeois sculptures.

- Visits to the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum, Die Neue Galerie, MoMA, and a rainy day zigzagging between 10th and 11th Avenues in the Chelsea gallery district. The exterior of the Guggenheim was hidden behind scaffolding, and inside was a zoo, packed to capacity with visitors literally tripping over Cai Guo-Qiang's installations of arrow-studded tigers and broken crockware.

- Spent way too much money shopping for new clothes at Nom de Guerre, Odin, Uniqlo, and especially Dunderdon. They make sturdy, simple workwear-inspired clothes for people like me, who don't have the burly shoulders to fit into actual workwear made for actual blue collar workers.

- I'm not a new-ager but I want one of these crystal lamps:

- Bekah is my only high school friend who I still keep in touch with. We met for lunch at a diner in her neighborhood in Brooklyn.

Not the most flattering photo, but keep in mind that she had gotten no sleep the night before — busy working on a research project for a demanding Hollywood director, and also preparing to host her extended family who were on their way to see her Ph.D. graduation ceremony. Yes, she's a bit of an overacheiver.

- Prospect Park is lovely, especially the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. This plant is called 'Banana Cream Allusion':

- I got my hair cut by a Russian lady at an untidy barbershop that had the ambiance of a small factory.

- I noticed a disturbing number of parents pushing strollers with children who looked completely old enough to walk on their own.

- I think my favorite building in New York is the Central Public Library. Check out the hot typesetter.

- It took a bit of searching, but my craving for an authentic knish was satisfied at Yonah Shimmel's on E. Houston on the Lower East Side.

- Other good food included highbrow amuse bouches at WD-50, the kind of place where the staff spoke with foreign accents, the clientele was a mix of expense account types and snooty Europeans, and the menu is intentionally "provocative". But damn, those bone marrow and foie gras appetizers were tasty.

Pork buns at the trendy noodle shop Momofuku (cross-cultural observation: the arms of New York foodservice workers are surprisingly free of tattoos; here in Portland a chef won't be taken seriously unless he's got at least one full sleeve).

Comfort food at the uncomfortably crowded Westville.

Organic cookies at Birdbath Neighborhood Green Bakery, where the "sustainable" ethic reminded me of home — except that in Portland you'd never see a group of several fashionably dressed black ladies in high heels buying hippie food.

Hopefully it will be less than 14 years before I visit New York again. And Joshua, I'm already making a list of things to do for when you come to visit me.

VOTE

2008-05-03T20:58:00.000-07:00

Two more reasons to like Portland:

1. Oregon's vote-by-mail system is convenient and relatively non-corrupt.

2. Portland's likely next mayor, Sam Adams, will be the first openly gay mayor of a top-40 USA city.

The first time I saw him in person was when he was campaigning for city commissioner a few years ago. On a Saturday afternoon I watched him park his pickup truck on Stark Street and carry a handful of campaign signs into Silverado (Portland's trashiest gay club). For a politician, he seems pretty down to earth — he rides his bike, and raises chickens in his back yard in North Portland. And then there's this bizarre story.

[UPDATE: he won.]

In my post-adolescent years I was a pseudo-radical who idolized Guy Debord and was way too cool to take mainstream politics or voting seriously. I'm sure that at least once during that phase of my life I nodded in agreement with the slogan, "if voting actually made a difference, they would've made it illegal already!"

I voted for Nader in 2000, because seriously, Democrats are lame. It never occurred to me that the dipshit loser Bush had a chance of winning. Really, who the hell would have voted for a dipshit loser like him anyway? But he won, and that sobered me up a little bit. For better or worse, I now follow national politics closely and daily.

Still, I can't bring myself to register as a Democrat. This year I wanted to, so that I could vote for Obama (in Oregon's closed primary system only registered Dems can vote in the Dem primary), but I missed the deadline. But unless the Clintons have some powerful tricks up their sleeves, Obama will win the Dem nomination. While I'm not enthusiastic about his centrist policies, I'm really looking forward to November when I get the chance to vote for an accomplished, intelligent person who speaks to us like adults, and in grammatically correct sentences. I might even put a bumper sticker on my car.

Muxtape bandwagon

2008-04-04T21:32:00.000-07:00

I'm jumping on it.

Blackstreet "No Diggity"
The Soft Pink Truth "Real Shocks" (Swell Maps)
Swell Maps "Midget Submarines"
Pitbull Ft. Piccalo "Dammit Man"
Universal Order of Armageddon "Visible Distance"
Menomena "Air Aid"
Steely Dan "Any Major Dude Will Tell You"
Botch "To Our Friends In The Great White North"
King Midas Sound "Surround Me"
John Cage "Sonata #5 for Prepared Piano"
Gang Of Four "Natural's Not In It"
Drive Like Jehu "Bullet Train To Vegas"

He is risen

2008-03-23T11:13:00.001-07:00

Wonder

2008-03-01T17:04:00.000-08:00

Stevie Wonder performing "Superstition" live on Sesame Street. This video is so awesome it almost made me cry — partly from thinking about how crappy today's children's entertainment is in comparison, but mostly out of joy.

And while we're on the subject of Stevie Wonder and tears, I'd like to take this opportunity to brag that I've made the ladies cry with my karaoke rendition of "You Are the Sunshine of My Life".

Advice re: a vice

2008-02-26T22:40:00.001-08:00

My last glass of wine, ever

I've always been a light drinker. I can count on one hand the number of times I've gotten trashed in the past two years. But I do often enjoy a drink, maybe two, so I was pretty disappointed today when my doctor told me:

No alcohol. At all. Ever.

So, it looks like I need a new vice.

Gambling? It's never been a thrill for me.
Weed? Makes my heart palpitate, my hands shaky and my brain foggy.
Coke? Only if you're buying.
Shoes? I already have plenty, although I guess I could clear out some space in my closet.

Please offer your suggestions in the comments.

The Eagle has landed

2008-02-19T22:55:00.001-08:00

About ten years ago a friend of mine set me up on a blind date with her coworker, a guy named Andy. At the time I was living a date-free existence while going to school in Eugene, Oregon, and visiting Portland on weekends every chance I could get. So I was up for anything. Andy suggested we go to the Eagle. I'd never been, but it sounded interesting. When he told me that there was an Underwear Party that night ("but you don't have to take your clothes off if you don't want to, I'm not going to"), I knew I'd be out of my element but I did my best to act cool and unfazed about it.
When we came in, the bar was crowded full of men, mostly undressed and mostly quite a bit older than us. It wasn't as creepy as I was expecting – everybody was friendly – but there was plenty of naughty behavior going on in the dark corners. "Oh, it's nothing like it used to be," people told me, "this place used to be really sleazy back in the 80s."

Years later I was telling newcomers to Portland about the Eagle, "it's not as sleazy at it used to be back in the 90s. Over there where the pinball machine is now, that used to be the BJ nook. And you never knew what kind of scene you'd run into in the bathroom."

For a few years the Eagle seemed to be on the decline, and the dozen or so times I went there after my first Underwear Party it was usually boring and sparsely attended. Until more recently, when a new owner wised up and let the younger generation inject some energy into the place with monthly club nights like JACK!, Blow Pony and some other events, where the crowd was mixed and the music was better than average, or even fresh. If you went on the right night, instead of geriatric suburban leather daddies you'd see the Eagle packed with eager young revelers — men, women, girls, boys, and ambiguously gendered persons, punks, hipsters, bears, freaks, average joes, exiles from the shitty house music and jaw-clenching vibe of Portland's other gay bars.

At the same time, on the other side of Burnside Street, the neighborhood was completing its transformation from a gritty, if picturesque, warehouse/industrial district into a utopian yuppie paradise of well-executed urban planning, overpriced condos, and elite consumerism now known as the Pearl District. The writing on the wall became obvious enough for everyone to see: "Vaseline Alley", the short stretch of SW Stark Street which has been the center of Portland's gay nightlife for decades, inevitably would become a casualty of gentrification.

Saturday, February 9th was the Eagle's last night before moving into its new location in Old Town. Blow Pony burned the place down (so to speak), drawing a huge crowd of people who, like me, were surprised that they'd ever feel nostalgia for the dingy mezzanine, slow-moving lines at the bar, smoky air, and overflowing sewage flooding from the bathroom onto the dance floor.

I took a few pictures.

So what's next for the corner of SW 13th and Burnside? More condos, of course! But at least the plans, by architect/developer Skylab Design Group (with a reputation built on elaborately styled attention-getters like the Doug Fir Lounge), look a lot more interesting than the typical towers sprouting up in this part of town. An automated parking garage? A restaurant extending over the rooftop of the adjacent Crystal Ballroom? Twenty-two stories on a 5,000 square-foot lot? It looks pretty over-ambitious, especially in the current real estate market. "We have a lot of work to do to understand how we might achieve this financially and technically," as Skylab principal Jeff Kovel put it, but if they can pull it off, I'll be happy to see a lively and unique building on such a visible site. (a press release, a forum discussion, and the most up-to-date info at the Portland Spaces blog)

in the foreground, Whole Foods Market and an abandoned gay bathhouse

If a bullet should enter my brain

2007-12-05T22:32:00.000-08:00

In a previous post I mentioned how on my trip to San Francisco I took a stroll down Castro Street and unsuccessfully searched for the storefront that used to be Harvey Milk's camera shop. The current tenants of the space have made sure that won't happen again—they've commissioned a very visible commemorative mural inside the front window, inscribed with Milk's famously prescient line, "if a bullet should enter my brain, let the bullet destroy every closet door." More pictures and background at Towleroad.

And while I'm here, I'll recommend the 1984 film The Times of Harvey Milk (Ebert review, YouTube preview), which would be an excellent documentary even if the subject matter—the nascent gay movement in 1970's San Francisco, its charismatic figurehead, and his tragic assassination—weren't so compelling.

Hot springs, cold snow

2007-11-23T10:56:00.000-08:00

My Thanksgiving plans fell through, and I was a little too distracted to worry about coming up with a plan B (it's been a bad week).
My friend Pete was in the same boat. Since we liked Breitenbush so much (see previous post) we decided to check out Bagby hot springs. It was a sunny day, so the snow was a surprise. I took pictures while Pete put chains on his van, stuck on a deserted US Forest Service road.

We never did find the place, thanks to some inaccurate directions I got from the internet. Lesson learned. By the time we figured out which road to take, it was getting too late, so we abandoned our mission.
On the way back we stopped in Estacada, but unfortunately the Safari Club was closed for the holiday. It's a run down bar/diner (now a Chinese restaurant) from the 70s that houses an amazing collection of taxidermied hunting trophies.

Back in the city, we drove around looking for a place to eat that was open. My attitude was, if you're not going to be eating a home-cooked meal on Thanksgiving, you should just go for it and eat dinner somewhere really depressing, like a roach-infested Vietnamese mafia-operated fast food joint on Southeast 82nd. I couldn't make Pete see it my way, though, so I just went home and ate a sandwich by myself.
Later that night, the new Coen brothers movie No Country for Old Men, which stars Javier Bardem as a ruthless cold-blooded killer. Spoiler alert: lots of people die violently. Afterwards, a watery drink at the nearly empty Eagle dowtown.
How was your Thanksgiving?

Breitenbush Hot Springs

2007-11-04T23:10:00.001-08:00

Nature is the unofficial state religion here in Oregon. I'm not a religious man, but this weekend I took a trip to Breitenbush Hot Springs. I'm tempted to convert.

More on my Flickr page.

Free font: Zalamander

2007-10-29T22:59:00.001-07:00

This one has been available for a while now, but it's new to me so I'm posting the link. What sets Zalamander apart from the thousands of crappy free fonts to be found on the web is that it has a full character set (including complete punctuation, accented characters, diacritics, and even Cyrillic, in case you need to typeset some Russian), and a range of six weights. And it's well-crafted too — the letter shapes are lively with unexpected angles, but they fit together and don't seem arbitrary or wacky. Download the all caps version for free, but you'll have to pay for it if you want lower case.

Night view

2007-10-18T22:41:00.000-07:00

Radio Cab garage, gas station open to the public 24 hours, NW 16th Avenue.

Unimaginative name

2007-10-17T22:23:00.000-07:00

Pro bono

2007-10-17T20:17:00.000-07:00

With so many Republican sex scandals lately, who can keep track of all of them? I recently found a website called republicansexoffenders.com where somebody has been trying to keep a list. I like the idea, but his web design really needed help. The title banner especially was so bad that it hurt my eyes. I was in the right semi-bored frame of mind to consider making a new graphic as an anonymous favor. A quick Google image search found the perfect picture:

...so of course I had to go with it. I made the new title banner graphic and sent it unsolicited. He was quite pleased and put it up right away. Check it out.

Update: Joe.My.God. posted a link to the site, and included my graphic.

Seattle

2007-10-07T20:21:00.000-07:00

Ian and Gabriel's kitchen.

A magic shop (not to be confused with a magick shop) at Pike Place market.

I was surprised to learn that this Richard Serra sculpture is fragile and delicate. With the price of steel going up lately, he must be scrimping on the cheap stuff to save money.

(click on pictures for bigger view)

Morning coffee

2007-09-27T07:49:00.000-07:00

Bullet points

2007-09-23T11:22:00.001-07:00

I had a three-day weekend. So far I have managed to accomplish absolutely nothing productive. At this rate, I may as well cultivate a drug addiction -- it wouldn't make much of a difference.

Say hello to Bye and Bye, my new favorite neighborhood bar on 10th & Alberta (only a few blocks away from my house). Just opened last week in a nicely renovated mid-century building, cool art, big patio, attractive staff, but the vegan menu strangely lacks any shareable finger-food (except for $2 chips & salsa). C'mon, it's a bar, serve some french fries. I'm not so sure about southern style fake meat, but I'll go there to drink, not eat. Approximately 75% of the bikes I counted parked outside on "Portland's biggest bike rack" were fixies.

Maybe I'll have to take a trip to New York before the year's over -- I just read about the Richard Prince retrospective at the Guggenheim. I've been meaning to make a replica of one of his muscle car hood sculptures to hang out my wall. I'm sure he wouldn't mind if I copied him, since he became famous after "re-photographing" other people's photographs as part of the 1980s Appropriation Art trend.

While browsing the Guggenheim website I found an announcement for the upcoming Cai Guo-Qiang exhibition. I need to pay more attention to the art world, because I'd never seen his spectacular work before. This is "Head On", an installation of 99 wolves crashing headfirst into a glass box:

All I can say is, holy shit.

Sold out

2007-09-16T10:08:00.000-07:00

Friday evening I saw Andrew Dickson deliver his presentation, "Sell Out", which was part of PICA's TBA:07 festival. Using PowerPoint slides and pacing back and forth with a microphone and huckster's mannerisms, he described "the 27 steps to selling out". I'm not sure what to say about his schtick -- not funny enough to be stand-up comedy, not scholarly enough to be a lecture, not over-the-top enough to be motivational speaker, almost but not quite critical enough to be satire. (Here's a good review, and a caustic review.) It was thought-provoking though, and entertaining, especially since I've known Andrew for years, back when he was a starving artist surviving on cheap burritos and maxing out his credit cards to make Good Grief, an endearingly corny coming-of-age/roadtrip feature-length film in which I played a small role (the shoot was great fun, although I'll admit I'm kind of glad my name is misspelled in the imdb.com credits). Now he's getting paid handsomely to write copy for death star ad agency Wieden+Kennedy, where his performance took place. Along with its main client Nike, W+K attracts more than its share of haters, but the interior of their building sure is nice, designed by Portland's highest-profile architecture firm Allied Works.

Later that night I came to Holocene just in time to see the end of Captain Ahab's set. Their music is a balance of dirty, smart, and stupid, with an emphasis on the stupid. But you gotta love that one half of the scruffy duo is solely responsible for dancing, sweating profusely, stripping down to a blue Speedo, and getting the crowd live (or molesting them, depending on your point of view). Punk rock for the age of laptop computer music.

photo swiped from Impose Magazine (click for more pics)

Headliners Yo! Majesty attracted a capacity crowd. I don't know if they're the only out lesbian hip-hop act around, but they're definitely the best. They were seriously good regardless of identity politics, and deserve to blow up huge.
Apparently continuing the night's theme of sweaty exposed skin, one of the Y!M MCs performed topless, which was probably intended as a confrontational move, but since we're kind of jaded around here, the audience was unfazed by the exposed boobs. Her stage presence was hard and butch, but in an odd moment at the end of the set, she got a little verklempt at the crowd's enthusiasm, almost like she had never seen so many happy white people dancing and cheering in one sold-out room before.

Beth Ditto of the Gossip interviews Yo! Majesty:

Oops.

2007-09-09T09:52:00.001-07:00

I went shopping for a bike yesterday. I have a rusty old J.C. Higgins 3-speed cruiser collecting dust in the garage, which I bought 10 years ago for $10 and a pitcher of PBR, but I haven't ridden it in a couple years. But since I'm going to participate in the Bike Commute Challenge like a good Portlander, I ought to have something a little more rideable.

Revolver had the type of bike I was looking for, and the non-snobby bike-hipster punk salesman set me up with one to take for a test spin. I immediately learned that despite what you may have heard, you can forget how to ride a bike. Or at least how to mount one. I crashed on the sidewalk outside of the store, and got laughed at by a carload of gangsta thugs.
The dudes in the shop must have seen me, but were polite and didn't say anything about it when I returned after a quick ride around the block. I bought the bike and rode it home without incident. It's nice.

Maybe someone can tell me if this coincidence is significant: the guys at the bike shop were listening to a post-metal band called Isis. Later that evening I crossed paths on the sidewalk with a woman walking her pit bull, which ran up to sniff my leg (the dog, not the lady). The woman scolded, "Isis, no!". Maybe the ancient Egyptian goddess of magic and life is trying to tell me something? Regardless, I downloaded some tracks from Isis, the band, which I am listening to right now. I like their heavy crushing songs better than their arty ambient songs.

I'm going to go ride my bike now.

New job

2007-08-16T19:26:00.000-07:00

A lucky set of circumstances converged in my life, and in ten days I will start working at a new job. I won't be getting paid much more than I am now, but that's OK because the location (I can ride a bike to work), hours (not too early-bird), décor (modernist), and buzzwords (sustainable, LEED-certified, etc.) are much better. This is what my new office looks like:

Well, sort of -- there are models in beige sitting on the the tables. (link)

In Which I Tediously Recount the Details of My Recent Vacation

2007-08-10T00:13:00.001-07:00

I woke up at 5:00 A.M. on Thursday, and after riding in a cab, a jet, several motorized walkways and escalators, a little tram, and a BART train, I checked into my hotel at 4th & Market in San Francisco by 10:30. Snacked on a coconut fruit cake from a Chinatown bakery on Grant while on my way to William Stout Architectural Books. I was a little overwhelmed by their selection, and their store was so crammed that browsing was a little difficult, but I decided on a few items to purchase, including a monograph on Koolhaas/OMA's amazing Seattle Public Library. Since I was in the neighborhood, I checked out City Lights bookstore, which is a historically interesting landmark if you're interested in the beat movement (I was really into Kerouac, Burroughs and Ginsberg during my late adolescent phase), but otherwise just a pretty good bookstore. Hey, I live a few miles away from Powell's, probably the best bookstore in the English-speaking world, so it's kind of hard to impress me.
Outside the store, a horrifying brochure documenting the abuses of the Chinese government against the Falun Gong movement blew in the wind and landed on my feet, so I felt compelled to read it while waiting for Roy to pick me up in his VW Beetle. Months earlier we had e-flirted and talked on the phone while he was working in Portland, but never met until now. We ate burritos at a taquería on 19th & Mission while entertained by busking musicians. Roy had a meeting and a houseguest to attend to so he dropped me off in the Castro, where I picked up a copy of the latest issue of BUTT (NSFW), and noticed that many of the men in the neighborhood attempt to look like porn stars, to varying degrees of success. It's a strange little parallel universe -- with a barber shop, a Walgreen's, a natural food store, a Korean-staffed manicure joint -- but everyone is gay (except for the straight tourist couples nervously clutching each others' hands). I did some window shopping, failed to find the historical plaque marking the location of Harvey Milk's camera store, hopped on the Muni train back to my hotel, and took a nap.
Later that evening, back to the Mission to check out Truck, a low-key little gay bar on Folsom with a good DJ, cheeky blue-collar inspired decor, and a tasty sausage sandwich. After walking under overpasses and stepping over sidewalk squatters, I arrived at my next stop, the Eagle, where a band of young men born in the 80s were playing a loud pastiche of rock styles from the late 60s (I suppose it's a good thing that kids these days still appreciate Blue Cheer, MC5, and Black Sabbath). Although I wanted to move on to my next stop (Tubesteak Connection at a hole-in-the-wall Tenderloin tranny bar called Aunt Charlie's) it was still a little early for that, so I killed some time sipping on another bourbon & soda while text-messaging my friends. And then a tall handsome bearish dude walked in solo and caught my eye. I'm normally too shy to cruise at bars, but we struck up a conversation about music that was soon drowned out by the next band of retro rockers. So instead of shouting in each others' ears, we got frisky in the middle of the audience full of straight kids who came to watch the bands, not the floor show. I'm sure some of them were thinking, "get a room!" We went back to my room. I'll have to check out Aunt Charlie's next time I'm in town.
Next morning, killing time shopping at Marshall's while waiting for my parents to come pick me up, I traded flirty smiles with another tall handsome bearish dude. Cruising in San Francisco is too easy. No time to follow through though -- it was time to head down to Monterey for my aunt and uncle's anniversary party/family reunion. It was my first time in Monterey, which is a nice and posh little tourist town. We had a fancy banquet dinner at a trés bourgeois hotel, where I was somewhat underdressed.
Family was nice, but the Monterey Bay Aquarium was more memorable. Jellyfish are beautiful; sunfish are bizarre. Cannery Row was saturated with otter-related kitsch, which made me chuckle but I wasn't about to explain to my mom why. Speaking of otters, take a look at the cutest YouTube animals ever.
The rest of my trip was pretty boring. Let me just say I'm glad I don't live in the Salinas Valley.

Michelangelo Antonioni R.I.P.

2007-07-31T21:18:00.000-07:00

Link to New York Times obituary.

When Hårald met Søren

2007-07-28T09:38:00.000-07:00

The Portland Ikea store opened a few days ago. This, of course, was inevitable:

Container ship wrecks

2007-07-24T23:20:00.000-07:00

Photo gallery of shipping disasters. Huge stacks of toppled shipping containers, ships on fire.

Link from boingboing.net

Swell maps

2007-07-14T15:36:00.000-07:00

Geoffrey Manaugh over at BLDGBLOG has a post on "fossil rivers" -- the geological evidence left behind when the Mississippi has changed its course over time, leaving behind natural levees and curly dead-ends. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has made maps documenting the phenomenon, which are visually stunning in an unintentionally abstract-expressionist sort of way.

You can see very high-res scans of the maps on Geoffrey's Flickr page. I'm going to download this one and get a poster-sized print made to hang on my wall.

Free Font: FF Good

2007-07-10T21:31:00.000-07:00

Fontshop periodically makes some of their fonts available for free download. Right now you can pick up a copy of FF Good in the Wide Light version. Nothing too exciting here, but it's got some nice qualities of a 19th-century grotesque (similar to Bureau Grot) combined with the straight sides on round characters (like you see in Trade Gothic Condensed or DIN Scrift) that give it an industrial feel. The complete family includes more weights and widths than you could shake a stick at, but unfortunately no italics.

Power Clean

2007-06-25T10:33:00.000-07:00

My housemate bought this face cleaner, and while showering this morning I couldn't help but stare at the package and notice how the copywriter missed no opportunity to remind me of how manly the product is.

"Men's Expert": this product has been approved by the technocratic authority.

"ADS Active Defense System": acronyms are manly, like NASCAR or NBA. So are words like "active," "defense," (go D!) and "system".

"Power Clean" is a weightlifting exercise.

Shine? Too pretty. Smooth? Too metro. Ah, I got it: "Anti-dullness". Sounds vigilant.

"Menthol": because mint is for Tic-Tacs and mojitos. Menthol sort of rhymes with ethanol, which is the active ingredient in Jack Daniels. And don't black dudes smoke Newports?

M.I.A. "Boyz"

2007-06-12T18:04:00.000-07:00

New video for M.I.A. has hypercolor 80s-style computer animation and insane outfits; "also, we have dance moves for 8,000 years."

In other news, the London 2012 Olympics animated logo causes seizures and will be out of style by the year 2012.

Father's Day Found

2007-06-08T17:32:00.000-07:00

In anticipation of Father's Day, here's a letter I found outside a mediocre Thai restaraurant on Venice Boulevard (a few doors down from the Jurassic Museum of Technology) in Culver City, California on May 12:

5/1/07 1:00 Pm

Hey M----- What's Up

I'm sittin in an Irish pub drinking a pint of beer and I want to write you this letter.

It's a little slow at work today and I wanted to write you a letter for a while now so I couldn't think of a better place.

Well it breaks my heart to see you locked up. I hope that you want to change and take control of your life soon.

In this letter I'm going to tell you the real fuck the candy-coated shit. It serves no one

I think you need to find out what you want to do for a job — career, and do it. Maybe you want to be a plumber learn how to do it and fuckin do it. Plumber is only an example. Maybe you want to paint or do stereos or carpet, or tint windows, anything, but you need to pick something and pick it quick and start making some money.

I wish I had your life if I could switch my life for yours I would of done it a long time ago. My point is You have a great opportunity and a great life ahead of you.

Sometimes I wish I would have joined the Marines or Army just for two years. See the world and have that discipline in my life.

Sometimes I think you should join the "Peace Corps" its a group that helps the poorest countries in the world they pay for everything if you give them time. I don't know if they pay you or not, but God sure does. You get to see the world and see how other people live.

When I was in Honduras people gave me attention just because I was American. I mean pretty woman. I said what the fuck am I getting married for. Just Kidding. I was just playind soccer in the street with the kids and aot of people came out of their houses and watched me. It was fun.

A--- & O--- are pretty good all they want to do is skateboard and thats fine with me because I like them being outside excercising, using creativity and hopefully building confidence. I know some of the guys their are up to shit. But I told A n O if I see or catch them smokin weed or cigarettes or beer I will beat their asses.

You are going to go through different points in your life you need to want to get to the next stage and be different than you are know.

I will always be your Dad but know its time for me to be your best friend. I want to see you do something in another country. I guarantee you will never regret it. Trust me and your life will change.

If you don't change and keep doing what your doing you will spend alot of time in jail or die.

My dream is to see you happy and a productive person in this world, and I want to see you travel the world.

I love you M-----. Ive got to run let me know if you want to change your life when your out.

Dad

Digging through old photos

2007-06-03T12:16:00.000-07:00

This is my friend Kelly, 2003.

A wet T-shirt. I don't know why this picture came out green.

One more.

I used to take a lot more photos back when I was working at a photo lab. This weekend I've been uploading lots of my old scans to my Flickr page.

First post.

2007-06-02T11:45:00.000-07:00

One of my new year's resolutions was to start a blog. Now that it is June, I have started a blog. One of my other new year's resolutions was to procrastinate less.