more pics

I love the camera on my new iPhone. It's one of the first and most important things I was excited about when getting the damn thing. Here are some pictures I took today and yesterday.

Capitol Hill Art Walk Dec 2010

Tonight I went to Blitz,the Capitol Hill Art Walk a nd took some pictures. I figured this would be a good place to put the pictures. It was raining so I didn't go to too many places, but I got my usual awesome corndog at The Unicorn.

Catalyst Gallery:
Keys of all sorts by R.S. Delucco



Vermillion :
Photographs by Tomiko Jones





Trapeze Studio:

nyc

I recently went on my first trip to New York City. Do I even need to mention how awesome it was? I imagine it would take several week-long visits to the Big Apple to be able to see and do most of the things there are to see and do, so naturally the few days we were there were packed.

The subways in New York are exactly as you would imagine they are, complete with urine smell. Getting around requires some physical endurance due to standing on the subway, walking quickly on the street, and climbing staircase after staircase. I would never think of driving around in that city. Well, never say never, but I don't think I could handle all the jay-walking pedestrians. Car horns go off every few minutes, or seconds in a busy part of Manhattan. I really got used to the sound.

The MOMA was one of my favorite parts. So crowded but hey, it's NYC and it was totally worth walking around people. I got to see some great shit. People are crazy, y'know? We also saw some celebrities on stage; Francis McDormand in 'North Atlantic' (crazy) and Sean Hayes and Kristin Chenoweth in 'Promises, Promises' (Turkey Lurkey Time!)

Anyway, it took a day or two to process the whole thing. It happened so fast. I can't wait to go back, but there are a lot of other places I have to hit up first. I'll see you again someday, New York.

to do list

- Make new post as an excuse to display new header (check!)

- Scan cartoon I did for Lulu

- Draw another page of 'Thump Thump'

- Review a comic book for the Comic Collector's Live forums

- Enter next long box into database

- Throw out clothes that are falling apart.

- Order new hoodies

- Order Jack3D

- Finish still life

- Throw Styrofoam away.

witches and wolves

I'm not the type of guy who actively looks for music, at least not very often. Compared to most people, especially in Seattle, my collection is minimal. This is probably because I'm usually around people who listen to great music and I steal from them. Still, my own collection gets stale and once in a while I go out and try to find something that tickles the ears. That's what I did last night.

For a while I've been meaning to explore all the music references in the Phonogram comic books. The premise of the book is that music is a form of magic and is used to cast spells. These stories mostly focus on indie and brit-pop. There a loads of references to bands and songs I don't know. I started with the first issue of the second series. Luckily, each issue has pages of annotations for all the references, like any self-serving music snob masturbatory work should.

I found a couple of things from bands that I have heard before, like this track that Jeremy has played in the car before:


There were a couple of bands mentioned that I had heard of before but had not actually heard:




And there was this pukey-cute one that the whole issue was based on:


Another thing that happened this weekend was a viewing of New Moon. There was a decent Thom Yorke song in that too:


I think I'm Team Jacob.

snoop opera

Today's episode of One Life To Live had a couple of reasons as to why it's the best (daytime) soap opera ever. Passions will always be my favorite but there's no denying that OLTL is better.

Reason #1: Shamelessly lazy writing

All soaps have lazy writing, it's a definitive characteristic. OLTL takes it past the typical repetition and formula. For instance a character introduced in the early nineties was portrayed by an Asian-American actress. The character left the show and came back as a blond with a southern accent. I don't think they even bothered to explain it. How could you? Today's episode touched on another unexplainable occurrence in Llanview.

Quick back story: Years ago Todd's sons are kidnapped and taken to an island. He and Tea go to the island and rescue them, but Todd abandons her there not knowing she is preggers with his baby. Years later, Tea reveals the daughter she had with Todd. So, the daughter should be younger than the sons that were kidnapped, right? Nope, she's in high school, but the oldest son is only 10 years old. The poor girl is a victim of a phenomenon known as Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome. I noticed it when she was introduced a few months ago, but until now I thought I was the only one. Today, the son, Jack, meets his sister, Dani, for the first time. Here's how it went:

Jack: You're my sister?

Dani: Who were you expecting, Taylor Swift?

Jack: But you're, like, old.

Dani: What does that, like, mean?

Jack: I overheard my mom and dad talking, that Tea and my dad had a kid. So I figured you'll be my little sister. I thought you'd be, like, eight or nine.

Dani: Well I'm, like, not.

Jack: That makes no sense.

Dani: Get over it.

That's it! That's all she wrote. The rules of time and space were bent to the will of these people and that's the only explanation we get. I think I like it because they at least mention the paradox, and it's done so quickly and quietly. With all the mundane crap dialogue soaps have, you tune a lot of it out and it would be easy to miss a little wink like that.

Reason #2: Snoop Dogg is from there.

Snoop likes to stop by the show once in a while. With all the time they saved with the lazy writing, they concocted this back story for him where he grew up there and was on a TV show there and is best buds with the police commissioner.

picturesque

This is Cinnamon, circa 2000-2001. This was at the mall and she was giving one of those consumer surveys about underwear. For my trouble I got a few pairs of briefs to try out. A few weeks later a friendly man with a southern accent called me and asked me questions about them (they were decent but pretty inferior to any leading brand), then I got a check in the mail for $5.00. It was pretty cool.