Two days ago, that is.
- Andrew
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Feeding the Interbeast
Hi, blog. Sorry I've been neglecting you. I have been legitimately busy, though, with real life stuff. Not that real life is more important than the documenting thereof. I would never suggest that. But you know what I mean, blog. Right? Geez, don't be so sensitive.
First of all, here's a photo from the previously mentioned The Lodge show, which proves that I was actually there as a participant. On the video all you can see of me is my right hand, but I'm the one going DUNNNNN-DUNN-DUNN DUGGA-DUNNNN DUGGA-DUGGA-DUNN.
The Lodge is currently recording. Drums are all done. It's going to sound pretty great.
Some other photo news is that Alison (with some help from me and our friend Chris) put together a portfolio of her photography this weekend, in order to apply for membership at a cooperative photo gallery in town. It looks really, REALLY good, and I can't see any reason why they wouldn't invite her right in and ask her to please put together a solo show. It's quite exciting to see so many great photos she's taken all together in one spot, and very nicely displayed.
Other, less high quality photo news is that I finally got those pinhole photos we took weeks ago scanned and fixed them up a little bit. Most of the stuff was unfortunately either completely overexposed or not exposed at all. I'm thinking some people's film was not turning properly on the spool when wound. But a few of my shots turned out OK, especially the ones I took at Johanna's choir's performance in a church. Here are the best:
We went to see Bob Dylan on Wednesday with Johanna, and also Krista. I have to say it kind of stunk. To be fair, his singing was better and less predictable than the one other time I saw him (i.e. he didn't sing every song using the exact same two-note interval relentlessly). But the band backing him up was incredibly bland: buncha session guys doing their best impression of the Blues Brothers, circa Jim Belushi. And Bob himself was playing this cheesy Casio organ thing that I believe he stole from a roller rink. It felt like we were on some kind of seniors' cruise most of the time. Apparently lots of people loved it, though, because we found ourselves forced into a standing ovation at the end.
Finally, I'm happy to report that I'm over the withdrawal from caffeine and feeling pretty fine, thank you very much. It took about a week. My energy level seems to be more consistent over the course of an average day now, less manic. And getting out of bed is easier when the alarm goes off. Today I pitched the first two games of the softball season, and I didn't fall asleep once. We still lost, though.
OK, blog? Are we pals again? You know I have other friends I have to see from time to time, but you'll always be my favouritest.
- Andrew
First of all, here's a photo from the previously mentioned The Lodge show, which proves that I was actually there as a participant. On the video all you can see of me is my right hand, but I'm the one going DUNNNNN-DUNN-DUNN DUGGA-DUNNNN DUGGA-DUGGA-DUNN.
The Lodge is currently recording. Drums are all done. It's going to sound pretty great.
Some other photo news is that Alison (with some help from me and our friend Chris) put together a portfolio of her photography this weekend, in order to apply for membership at a cooperative photo gallery in town. It looks really, REALLY good, and I can't see any reason why they wouldn't invite her right in and ask her to please put together a solo show. It's quite exciting to see so many great photos she's taken all together in one spot, and very nicely displayed.
Other, less high quality photo news is that I finally got those pinhole photos we took weeks ago scanned and fixed them up a little bit. Most of the stuff was unfortunately either completely overexposed or not exposed at all. I'm thinking some people's film was not turning properly on the spool when wound. But a few of my shots turned out OK, especially the ones I took at Johanna's choir's performance in a church. Here are the best:
We went to see Bob Dylan on Wednesday with Johanna, and also Krista. I have to say it kind of stunk. To be fair, his singing was better and less predictable than the one other time I saw him (i.e. he didn't sing every song using the exact same two-note interval relentlessly). But the band backing him up was incredibly bland: buncha session guys doing their best impression of the Blues Brothers, circa Jim Belushi. And Bob himself was playing this cheesy Casio organ thing that I believe he stole from a roller rink. It felt like we were on some kind of seniors' cruise most of the time. Apparently lots of people loved it, though, because we found ourselves forced into a standing ovation at the end.
Finally, I'm happy to report that I'm over the withdrawal from caffeine and feeling pretty fine, thank you very much. It took about a week. My energy level seems to be more consistent over the course of an average day now, less manic. And getting out of bed is easier when the alarm goes off. Today I pitched the first two games of the softball season, and I didn't fall asleep once. We still lost, though.
OK, blog? Are we pals again? You know I have other friends I have to see from time to time, but you'll always be my favouritest.
- Andrew
Monday, May 12, 2008
Shave and a Haircut...
Two bits of news. The first is that we got a new computer. It's pretty great. Runs like a dream and looks beautiful. I've never actually bought a brand new computer before. Feels weird to be on the cutting edge. It has a built in camera with which I can take hilarious pictures like this of myself. And the new Apple keyboard is a gorgeous feat of engineering and design. It's about 1/4" thick and the keys are all separated from each other and stand up about 1/8 of an inch from the metal base, so there's nowhere for corn flake crumbs and mysteriously long hairs to get lost. Keys have a satisfying and gentle "plip" to them. I am gonna miss those Helvetica Compressed Oblique characters they've had for so long, though.
The other piece of news is that I've given up coffee. It was my last addictive vice, and I finally decided it had to go. I'd rather feel the way I'm supposed to feel, instead of tricking my body into feeling the way I'd prefer it to feel at the expense of it forgetting how to feel that way by itself. However, that said, I am so far generally quite sluggish and full of aches and pains I didn't know about. It's quite amazing and frightening how different two cups a day has made me. I'm not sure how long it'll take to get through the withdrawal period, but it is slowly getting better. I find the differences between nicotine and caffeine addictions very interesting. One of the big tricks to overcoming a nicotine "habit" is to notice that the feeling of "needing" a cigarette is not actually any kind of physical pain or even really discomfort that you can locate anywhere in the body, but just an intense DESIRE. Whereas caffeine withdrawal seems to be the opposite: I have no primary desire to drink a cup of coffee, except insofar as I know it would relieve all this physical pain and exhaustion I feel.OK, there is actually one more piece of news, which is that The Lodge played their second show on Saturday, and it was superior in every way to the first. Having made our debut, there was less pressure and fear that we might blow it, so we could spend more energy just rocking out. We all had a really great time, and so did the audience. I'm kind of itching to play again as soon as possible now. Here's a frustratingly short clip, courtesy of Cliff's mom's cell phone.
- Andrew
Sunday, May 04, 2008
Old Guy Type Stuff
Hmm. I seem to be down to three posts a month. Does this mean my life is slowly winding down and I'll soon be ready for the scrap heap? I hope not.
I am definitely feeling like an old man at work lately. Pretty much everyone is a lot younger than me, and they're all constantly yammering about some stupid new TV show or how drunk they got at the Liquordome or how many facebooks they have on their cell phone or something. I try to just ignore them and do my work instead of pointing out the errors of their naïve and shallow motives, but sometimes it's hard. Especially if I haven't had a nap recently.
Luckily, I've got the old Rock 'n Roll to keep me somewhat youthful. (Does 'n,' meaning 'and,' take one apostrophe or two? Alison and I were arguing about this the other day. There are letters dropped on both sides of the 'n,' but if you use two apostrophes it ends up looking like quotation marks. Except that the first one would be upside down. But nobody knows that these days. They'd probably just think you're trying to be ironic. And anyway, look at "won't". Not only are there extra letters dropped that are not indicated by apostrophes, but there's an 'o' that's appeared out of nowhere! What's up with that? I'm sticking with my one apostrophe before. I have seen it, rarely, with just one AFTER the 'n', but, to me, that would be pronounced "nuh," rather than "uhn". Yeah, that one's just totally wrong.) The Lodge has a second show coming up this Saturday, and we haven't had a rehearsal since the last one, so there'll definitely be some practising going on this week. We don't really have anything recorded, except rehearsals using one microphone, but as there has been so much demand from the virtual fanbase to hear something, anything — well, here's a song. It's from our last rehearsal before the first show. The ending is messed up, but you get the gist of it. Hope I don't get in trouble for this.
Last Sunday was International Pinhole Camera Day. Don't know if anyone was aware of that. Alison and Meg and our friend Chris and I all made scrappy little cameras out of Altoid mint tins. There was a bit of a long process to it, but it was fun. Then I went to see Johanna's choir perform in a church while the rest of them wandered around taking pictures. I got some shots of the choir and audience by setting the tin on a ledge and leaving it for three to four minutes. Indoor lighting = super long exposures. I wish I had some of the results to show you, but unfortunately we haven't been able to scan the negatives yet. The photo place was unable to make prints because the images take up too much length on the film, and the scanning has been problematic for the same reason. But I can see that there's definitely some good stuff on there. Verrrry panoramic and spooky looking. Here's some photos taken by other Canadian pinhole enthusiasts, to tide you over till I can get this sorted out. I kind of think the B&W stuff looks best.
Ali and I had a brainstorming session with our friend Matt last night, regarding this really great comic book idea we have. The three of us will all be working on it together. I don't really want to give away any details yet, but we managed to get quite a lot of the story hashed out. It was a lot of fun and I think the finished product will be quite impressive. Assuming I live that long.
We watched a movie the other night about a once famous novelist approaching death; maybe that's part of why I'm into this old man persona right now. It was called Starting Out in the Evening and was very very good. The old guy, Frank Langella, was especially watchable.
Now we're into the Cosmos box set. I can't believe it's been thirty years since that show aired. Man, was it ever great. I haven't seen it since then, and I'd forgotten how inspirational it was to me at the time. I remember now that my friends Blaine and Darren and I in grade six would come to school the day after an episode had been on and pretty much talk about it all day. I also remember giving an in-class presentation whose theme was "You're Crazy If You Think There's Not Other Life Somewhere Out There in the Universe," which seems to be one of the two major themes of the show. The other one is "You're Crazy If You Think You Need Religion or Superstition or Really Anything Beyond Science to Be Totally Awestruck by How Incredibly, Mind-Blowingly Vast and Complex and Beautiful Life and the Universe Are — I Mean, Just Look at Carl Sagan's Eyes Popping Out of His Turtlenecked Head As He Gets All Excited and Quasimystical Telling Us About This Wonderful Stuff. He Is INTO It, Man." I hope he's still admiring it all in some dimension out there.
- Andrew
I am definitely feeling like an old man at work lately. Pretty much everyone is a lot younger than me, and they're all constantly yammering about some stupid new TV show or how drunk they got at the Liquordome or how many facebooks they have on their cell phone or something. I try to just ignore them and do my work instead of pointing out the errors of their naïve and shallow motives, but sometimes it's hard. Especially if I haven't had a nap recently.
Luckily, I've got the old Rock 'n Roll to keep me somewhat youthful. (Does 'n,' meaning 'and,' take one apostrophe or two? Alison and I were arguing about this the other day. There are letters dropped on both sides of the 'n,' but if you use two apostrophes it ends up looking like quotation marks. Except that the first one would be upside down. But nobody knows that these days. They'd probably just think you're trying to be ironic. And anyway, look at "won't". Not only are there extra letters dropped that are not indicated by apostrophes, but there's an 'o' that's appeared out of nowhere! What's up with that? I'm sticking with my one apostrophe before. I have seen it, rarely, with just one AFTER the 'n', but, to me, that would be pronounced "nuh," rather than "uhn". Yeah, that one's just totally wrong.) The Lodge has a second show coming up this Saturday, and we haven't had a rehearsal since the last one, so there'll definitely be some practising going on this week. We don't really have anything recorded, except rehearsals using one microphone, but as there has been so much demand from the virtual fanbase to hear something, anything — well, here's a song. It's from our last rehearsal before the first show. The ending is messed up, but you get the gist of it. Hope I don't get in trouble for this.
Last Sunday was International Pinhole Camera Day. Don't know if anyone was aware of that. Alison and Meg and our friend Chris and I all made scrappy little cameras out of Altoid mint tins. There was a bit of a long process to it, but it was fun. Then I went to see Johanna's choir perform in a church while the rest of them wandered around taking pictures. I got some shots of the choir and audience by setting the tin on a ledge and leaving it for three to four minutes. Indoor lighting = super long exposures. I wish I had some of the results to show you, but unfortunately we haven't been able to scan the negatives yet. The photo place was unable to make prints because the images take up too much length on the film, and the scanning has been problematic for the same reason. But I can see that there's definitely some good stuff on there. Verrrry panoramic and spooky looking. Here's some photos taken by other Canadian pinhole enthusiasts, to tide you over till I can get this sorted out. I kind of think the B&W stuff looks best.
Ali and I had a brainstorming session with our friend Matt last night, regarding this really great comic book idea we have. The three of us will all be working on it together. I don't really want to give away any details yet, but we managed to get quite a lot of the story hashed out. It was a lot of fun and I think the finished product will be quite impressive. Assuming I live that long.
We watched a movie the other night about a once famous novelist approaching death; maybe that's part of why I'm into this old man persona right now. It was called Starting Out in the Evening and was very very good. The old guy, Frank Langella, was especially watchable.
Now we're into the Cosmos box set. I can't believe it's been thirty years since that show aired. Man, was it ever great. I haven't seen it since then, and I'd forgotten how inspirational it was to me at the time. I remember now that my friends Blaine and Darren and I in grade six would come to school the day after an episode had been on and pretty much talk about it all day. I also remember giving an in-class presentation whose theme was "You're Crazy If You Think There's Not Other Life Somewhere Out There in the Universe," which seems to be one of the two major themes of the show. The other one is "You're Crazy If You Think You Need Religion or Superstition or Really Anything Beyond Science to Be Totally Awestruck by How Incredibly, Mind-Blowingly Vast and Complex and Beautiful Life and the Universe Are — I Mean, Just Look at Carl Sagan's Eyes Popping Out of His Turtlenecked Head As He Gets All Excited and Quasimystical Telling Us About This Wonderful Stuff. He Is INTO It, Man." I hope he's still admiring it all in some dimension out there.
- Andrew
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