y'know when music ain't just music? when you are living some cheesy teen movie in your head and your music collection becomes the soundtrack to your mini-major drama? I just had me one of those....
The very best thing to come out of it, I can now see, is the on-the-go playlists I created on my ipod. I will spare you the "10 Things I Hate About You" details and just tell you the tunes:
I may have mentioned one or two times before that William Gibson is the closest thing to a god that this agnostic little jew has known.... Seriously, the way that man sees the world, and foresees it, it blows my mind....
And I think I may have just locked into the secret of the whole thing in this interview he did with Amazon.com:
"Amazon.com : We have your original proposal for the book up on our site, and the thing that struck me immediately was that none of the characters you discuss ended up, at least with the specifics that you give them at the time, in the final book. I'm just curious how you progress from one group of characters to another as you're planning the book or writing it. Gibson: Well, I think the key thing there is that I never really believe in the proposal.
Loves it....
No one ends up what they start out to be... The key is to not tie yourself too much to what you claimed in the beginning...
***** i am adding to this post again... I did it twice already, and now it feels like cheating not to admit i jkeep coming back and adding more stuff... But I forgot how much I love this man... so many things out of his mouth are the ones i wished i had said first (if I had ever done anything worth asking me my opinion on these matters, anyway). This little gem is from his blog
"It’s unlikely that meeting a writer of fiction will get me any closer to the writer’s work, in my experience. The opposite effect is sometimes noted. Writers of fiction, as I understand them, are writers because they can get closer to you *as marks on paper* than they can any other way. They cannot sit and tell you. If they could tell you, then why would they write? They cannot explain. They do not know, that way. They know transiently, at best, in the act of marking paper."
Someone reminded me about it today. I was talking about 'coohunting'. Not the website (no matter how much i love it), but the profession, marketing practice that was popular pre-internet. Searching through streets and stores and skate parks and dark bars for the people whoknew what was 'up' and then ripping it from their hands (or off their feet, their backs, their bookshelves and cd racks) and selling it to the public... forcing the alterna-kids to find the 'next big thing'.
It got me to thinking about whether that is possible, or even worthwhile in the exponentially faster trend cycle of the internet age... and so I went to search for it online. To remind myself what exactly that article said that made me so curious about spotting meaning in social symbol, and the process by which things become "things"... the journey of a real-world meme. and whether that process which so enchanted me a decade ago could be applied to the world i live in now...
.... and after some googling to avoid paying for a New Yorker Subscription to access their online archives i realized it was written by Malcolm Gladwell... The Canadian-raised author and theorist who had his 15 minutes when his books Blink, and the Tipping Point became the hottest things to pick up in the airport before a transatlantic flight, or a long weekend at the cottage. I always resisted, even refused, to read these books... for the same reason I hate Michael Moore movies. They have all the right ideas, but men like Gladwell and Moore make it so easy to fire off empty catch phrases without any content, research or thought... It propagandizes ideas which I actually believe to be true, worthwhile and useful. But they are never implemented or even studied because people would rather have the cliche than the lesson. It pisses me off that no matter how much I hate the Tipping Point for its Celestine-Prophecy-freakonomics-michael-moore-fly-by-night-nyt-bestseller list popularity Gladwell has a point...
I just think he pretty much summed it up in this article.... in 1997.
What does Gladwell think about trending in the internet age? I should probably read his book.
Its ironic that the only reason i dont want to read it is because everyone else loved it so much....
I love bacon... apparently so does the rest of the world... as it has prevailed despite its health risks and supine beginning...
As a jew, I am not really supposed to like bacon, or even know whether i dislike it or not, as its cloven hooves makes it forbidden. But I love all things bacon...
However, even the most kosher of jews could enjoy this:
I was so so close to not walking at all today. But I really wanted to test out the new app I downloaded on my Android... Plus I have a coat so warm it would make a Yeti jealous... and I needed to do something today, it was gorgeous and sunny out.
The route was a little bit of a mash up of the
high park and junction routes I have been doing recently. Perfect test for MyTracks. Below is the result of
my wanderings, and the testament to the marker setting on the GPS tracking system. It may have started military, but like every other technology worth its stars and stripes, its now suited to rambling and pointless thoughts and observations. Long live web 2.0
If you are that bored, you can click through on the markers to see the inanities noted in each spot along the journey...
I remember in the comic books I read as a kid, a million double digests filled with archie and jugheads hijinx, there was this one thing they would used to do. Its such a faint memorie i almost feel like I am making it up. But I remember they would have these pages that would be just one panel - an aerial view of a room or neighbourhood - and there would be a dotted line following the path of mischief and destruction that L'il Jinx or the family circus kids or whoever would beat through the world. I feel like MyTracks is the modern version of that....
I love it for the same reason I love the stitched digital photographic works of Alain Paiement, like this one below:
Parages (pane mundial) Lambada C-Print Mounted on Diabond 48"x83" 2004
Just makes me wish for the ten millionth time that I was artistic, and not just creative.
Creative - Artistic = eccentric
(by the way, theres a marker titled "Rods of steel" that referred to a picture that for some reason didnt show up.... its below... imagine the gams a girl would have living in any of those houses!)
.... between a longstanding love for film, a healthy respect for architecture, a nearly fetishistic obsession with design and a newfound respect for the sheer AMOUNT and quality of work this kind of animation requires I must say that Alex Roman's film The Third & The Seventh literally BLEW MY MIND this morning....
last friday I was faced witha jukebox... and I froze... it isn't that I don't love music, know music... but in the moment... I couldn't remember a SINGLE song that I liked... not one... so I ended up picking "A Little Less Conversation" by Elvis Presley... the Oceans 11 remix.... Not that that isn't a fun song... I like it...
But if jukebox choices are to truly represent you... as Nick Hornby says... its what you like, not what you ARE like... than it isn't the song I would choose to communicate my self to the world....
And then I threw my back out... So I spent a lot of time on my back with a heating pad, staring at the ceiling with nothing to do but listen to Classic Rock on 181.fm The Eagle on my internet stereo thingamajig...
so I made a list of SONGS THAT ARE AWESOME... there was 1 rule. I had to hear the song played... If I heard it, and it was awesome... I wrote it down. For those who care to judge me by my musical taste but cannot decipher my upside down scrawl - Here's the list:
Don't Think Twice - Bob Dylan
Can I Get a Witness - Marvin Gaye
Do It Again - Steely Dan
Changes - David Bowie
Keep On Rocking Me Baby - Steve Miller Band
Tiny Dancer - Elton John
In The Air Tonight - Phil Collins
Hit Me With Your Best Shot - Pat Benatar
Sweet Melissa - Allman Bros
Everyday People - Sly and the family Stone
Thunder Road - Bruce Springsteen
Beast Of Burden - Rolling Stones
Any Way You Want it - Journey
Midnight Rambler - Rolling Stones
Comfortably Numb - Pink Floyd
Saturday Night's Alright - Elton John (nearly disqualified for its recent high frequency repetitious presence in my life currently... but it still kinda kicks)
Copperhead Road - Steve Earle
The Break Up Song (They Don't Write 'Em) - Greg Kihn Band
Teenage Wasteland - The Who (Nearly disqualified for its relationship to CSI Miami and my nemesis David Caruso... but it kinda kicks)
So there's this chick that writes this website... http://www.thecherryblossomgirl.com.. I found it once when I was google image searching for images of cherry blossoms.
But I have since become majorly addicted. Its like the Parisian version of the Hills, except without the annoying plots, annoying characters and, best of all, no Spencer Pratt...
... Just pretty girls in pretty clothes, living a seeming life of leisure, and looking wicked cute doing it...
Plus she's French, which automatically gives her wicked street cred on all things awesome... mais non?
... I have a job, really... Its tough, in the modern day recesion, the age of salary freezes and position cuts, where cost of living increases have gone the way of the dinosaurs. I love my job, but the paycheque covers the essentials (read: rent and loan payments) but doesn't leave many dollars for much else.
But a resourceful girl as always I have found my way to circumvent. You know how they say a penny for your thoughts? Well, you can have mine for concert tickets, movie passes or free books.
The internet has created a multitude of sites that are open to content and willing to give you the experience if you are willing to share it with the masses. All you need is a basic grasp of grammar (very basic), a point of view and a little wit
Well someone created a record by showing 17 images of Uncle Jesse from Full House on a computer screen at once....
As a manic Full House fan... I felt it was my duty to beat it... and I did...
Presenting the 39 jesses....
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
...i am skeptical because this test seemed to peg me... got it right on the nose.... Look at my results
is it just self aggrandizing? or am i really this way? or is everyone really this way and it just managed to find great language to appeal to everyone?
So, back in college, when I still entertained the thought that I would one day be a great filmmaker, I used to make stuff....
My friend Zayna and I ran the campus tv station, TVMcGill, which by the way, is awesome to this day (due to my legacy, i'm sure)
Anyway, we use to misappropriate the resources to create our own projects... and this one time, we made a music video for a friends band, by editing it for three straight days during the run up to finals in our last year of school. Holed up in the student union for 72 hours we thought we were creating genius. we were actually creating this:
Now, about five years later, I found it on an afternoon of youtube googling phrases from my personal histopry to see what comes up.... I have absolutely no idea how it got there... as the master miniDV and Beta tapes are somewhere in a box in my apartment collecting dust with my books by Kant and Derrida. But I am happy it did.
Maybe not so my viral internet fame can begin, but definitely because watching it brought back the memories of making it, and those were some of the best days in all the ones I have spent toiling away in the movie industry.
And so I thought I might provide a little how to guide on how to make a horrible music video and guarantee a locked in love for filmmaking and future internet embarassment
DO: Create a dummy production company and change your cell phone answering machine to reflect it, thus giving you a home base to secure corporate sponsorship, thus ensuring you do not run up your parents credit card to make your masterpiece
DO NOT: Answer your cell after you have started drinking at night, or before you aare fully awake the next morning, inspiring your sponsor contact to ask "are you really a professional producer? are you a student?" and causing you to have to do a lot of grovelling and finance most of the video with the credit card your parents don't know about (yet)
DO: Figure out your concept and storyboards early, stick to it and follow through.
DO NOT: come up with a narrative that no one is EVER going to understand like... say... I don't know... a guy who wakes up on the roof in a kiddy pool and can't remember where he was or what he was doing the previous evening, causing him to recall it in flashbacks as he walk the streets of Montreal, only to realize that he had stolen the band's mojo and all the flashbacks were actually the aforementioned band chasing him through the streets, and when he finally puts it altogether he just happens to have mentioned the bands practice space, where they are currently practicing in pajamas, causing yet another chase down the block..... Trust me, you will get it, it won't be clear to anyone else.
DO: Prepare as much of the wardrobe, makeup, props, locations, extras, etc in advance
DO NOT: back down from any last minute challenges or changes. Some that we dealt with here were: -you aren't actually allowed to shoot in the montreal metro, which we did... so it was my job to distract any and all approaching subway cops while the band shot with the DP. I played stupid lost anglophone about 15 times, french subway cops are mean -The purple footie pajamas for one of the band members were too bright through the camera, we threw them in a mud puddle, then into a drier at the local laundromat, and they were good to go -we had NO shots of the dickies clothes or logo when they finally came through with the funds on our last day of shooting... we just went back and reshot some dickie's beauty shots... corporate selling out was ingrained in us early -we couldn't actually get our hands on a smoke machine to create a "smoke rising from an open bag" to signify the bands mojo... instead we had friends take turns hauling down smokes and breathing out the plumes through a hose we inserted througha hole in the bottom of a knapsack.... we killed a lot of brain cells for our art
DO: Always keep food and snacks on hand to keep everyone happy during the day
DO NOT: Let your main talent get loaded and show up 15 minutes before his call time... The coffee and breakfast burritos you have on hand will sober him up and entice him enough to shoot, but you will end up having to make him look that haggard and hungover for the rest of the shoot
DO: do this... its a once in a lifetime opportunity to be this self-indulgent and have this much fun with almost no consequences....
DO NOT: take yourself to seriously.... in the end, the only thing that will happen is a few hundred people seeing it on youtube a half-decade later, just have fun with it.
If you buy this duvet cover, screen-printed to resemble cardboard boxes, the proceeds go to support a dutch homeless shelter....
Now thats thinking outside the box....
I realize most of the people who read this are located a little west of the atlantic and probably are worried about the homeless problem at home.... Well, for all you Noprth American Stylistas/Philanthropists.... go here to get the duvet, help out some dutch people, then go here to make a donation to the United Way...
oh, yeah, I am scouring the interweb for new duvet covers to go with my kickass new apartment... description coming soon, as are the horror stories from my search!
From now on it will be the only way I date on the internet... These people decided that, rather than send back and forth lame messages, or meet (she was too shy) they would communicate artistically.
Super fun, right?
I have never gone in for the whole online dating thing... Not that I don't think it works. I just don't think it works for me. I used to make fun of it outright... no go... I did an internship after my first year of university at a PR Firm that was working on the rebranding campaign of webpersonals to lavalife.com. Webpersonals was the Worldwide Interweb extension to the company that runs those party chat line dating things.... you know, the ones with the really lame commercials... yeah, they own lavalife... or they did then. So everyone in the office had to sign up... This was back in 2000. Y2K was still fresh in everyone's mind, People still knew what compuserve was, and dating/meeting people through the internet was just not done.
Suffice it to say, I met some real losers.... but it was for work, so it didn't really count.
Since then I have just said i don't like internet dating... and yes, I make fun of it... So much so that my sister called me on it, told me I couldn't really have a say unless I tried it... so I did.
And it wasn't that bad... It wasn't that great either. Look, its not that internet dating is inherently a bad thing. But you are definitely going to find people looking for relationships... thats the point. But here's the thing. I am not looking for a relationship. The relationship should be the by-product of the person I meet, not the other way around... and that's completely a personal preference. Online daters are looking for the person best suited to the relationship they want to be in....
So you end up dating people's profiles. They have slotted themselves into categories... nice, neat, clean, friendly categories... and there is no context. You know what they like, who they are, before you are ever attracted to them... and that seems backwards to me.
Arin & Susan managed to get themselves out of those boxes... have a little context before they met up... they managed to get a sense of eachother through the quirks and preferences without actually saying flat out "these are my quirks and preferences"
there are, at this point, and according to my blog counter, 1538 unique visitors to my blog... I can only conclude that they have all landed here by mistake and immediately left for greener inter-pastures, as I have had two comments in my entire blogging career.... two... only two...
and you know what they say about two?
it can be as bad as one, its the loneliest number since the number one.....
so if you are reading this, even by accident because you were really googling "big breasted cheerleaders bounce in the shower" and got here by accident, leave me a comment, I just need that kind of approval from strangers... a love poem would be even better
