putting the j in jjosh

Afternoon Go-kart Grand Prix…Roscoe desperately tries to overtake Capo for the lead. Which he will do. And keep the lead for the rest of the day. Jerk.

The bachelor gets a free shoe-shine from DC latenite institution, Bigleg.

A random woman gives the bachelor some dancing love as the el-wire sign is hoisted and shown to the crowd. The faux zebra trim of the pimp hat is just visible below the sign’s foil backing. The bachelor’s hand appears to be moving towards the random woman’s chest, but this is actually just a smoov dance move.

There’s a proliferation these days of music videos that fairly grab you by the lapels and scream "look how clever! forward on to all of your friends!! post it on your blog!! now!!!" And while it often comes off as a blatant marketing move, when it’s done with style, and actually is, you know, clever, I have to appreciate it. And then, you know (again), forward it on to all my friends. Or post it on my blog.

This video, Naive New Beaters "Live Good", comes from a metafilter post, and the comments on it hint at both sides of this equation — from "how neat!" to "I’m so tired of this kind of crap." Many metafilterites hate the song, and I will say watching it without the audio is just as effective (though maybe not for the band).

Much as our parents’ generation derided the effect that MTV had on editing (faster cuts, more eye candy, louder), I can imagine a future in which we deride the way artworks become more and more "look at me!!!" in an attempt to stand out on a crowded playing field. And the kids of today will all say "are you kidding? that’s what makes it awesome!" Or whatever they say instead of "awesome". Maybe the new word will be "grandiose".

"That’s what makes it grandiose, yo!"

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Is this another example of a stupid human trick on youtube?

Or another example of how the contemporary urban environment is now constantly being re-contextualized for fun fun fun.

Something to think about.

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Much like the hi-5 video from a while back, this takes a (not so) simple idea and sees how far it can go…

For some reason this vid makes me feel good about life.

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I recently saw the excellent film by Penelope Spheris, The Decline of Western Civilization Part II. Part I was a documentary about the early LA punk scene, and it was unbelievably good. Hunt it down, the performances are stunning and seeing burnt-up stars like Darby Crash at their zenith is so energizing. Great great film.

Part II takes a look at the 1988 metal scene in LA. It’s a lot funnier than Part I, because hair metal is just naturally more hilarious than raw punk. Poison have become big stars, Ace Frehley of KISS is interviewed on a bed full of girls, everyone talks about how intensely they’re into drinks, drugs and sex, Aerosmith talk like they’re the biggest thing ever. Guns n Roses get a random mention at one point, but it’s in the context of all the bands currently playing LA trying to make it big.

And that’s one of the most poignant aspects of this doc — that there are so many bands profiled or mentioned who are so determined to make it big, and now, with the hindsight of history, we know that they won’t. Where are these folks now? There’s a sadness, and an irony, but also a strange sense of maturity that comes from seeing so many bands play out variations on this conversation:

PENELOPE: So what if you don’t make it?

BAND: That’s not an option. I will make it. There’s no alternative.

Maturity because I think, well, they didn’t make it, so they must have had to change that dream, or realize that the exuberance of youth is sometimes not enough to make the dream come true. You also need a healthy amount of luck. Rock is for the young, as others have been noting.

I wanted to show one of the bands so you could get a sense of what I’m talking about. For a bunch of reasons I chose this band called Odin. They seem to have it all, poised to break big. They’ve got the look, the girls, the Budweisers in the hot tub, the awesome old-school manager in a suit, oh yeah, and the ASSLESS CHAPS. The only problem is that their music is terrible…

…but somehow it’s still fun to watch them.

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Penelope Spheeris would go on to direct Wayne’s World, Beverly Hillbillies, Black Sheep and many other weak films.

It is now summer. Let us celebrate in two ways:

First, by song,

(yo la tengo – the summer)

and then, by poem (this poem is amazing! the ending is so fierce!):

The Summer Day

by Mary Oliver   

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-

the one who has flung

herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating

sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws

back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with

her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale

forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings

open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what

a prayer is.

I do know how to pay

attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to

kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and

blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been

doing all day.

Tell me, what else should

I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at

last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you

plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

Down in Nashville, TN, Maxine and I interviewing Native Alaskans about incredibly expensive guitars.

1940 Martin guitar

Yes, the Red Hook, Brooklyn Ikea opens on Wednesday, in two days’ time.

Yes, they’re doing some crazy promotion thing where the first 35 people in the store will get a free couch.

Yes, there are already people camping out in line.

I camped out once at RFK for Grateful Dead tickets in 1993 (I think it was ’93…Traffic was the opening act, so JW what year was that?). I knew a lot of people going to the show (and to camp out), and I figured I should experience the fabled Dead show at least once before Jerry died. Camping out was a lot of fun, almost a party unto itself, with various parking-lot shenanigans and goings on. I didn’t sleep much and the next day while driving home I had to repeatedly slap myself in the face to stay awake.

If you’re curious about the shenanigans and goings on at the Ikea camp out, racked.com is live-blogging from the line; they’ve got an embedded blogger who’s fifth in line.

It may be overstating the obvious, but these people must really really really want an Ikea couch.

UPDATE – from one of my favorite blogs of the moment: "Red Hook Blacks Line Up To Rob First 100 IKEA Customers."

the original pooh & piglet, also eeyore

early precursor to the more famous 7?

This is one of my favorite kinds of graffiti…it’s painted on a board which is then bolted onto a municipal sign…the backs of the bolts are bent so it can’t be removed…so smart…the 2pac quote is a bonus…

Last night I went out in the rain to this event at the Eyebeam gallery in Chelsea. I’ve been to a couple of things there (Robot Talent Show!), and they do these Mixer events every now and then…we tried to go to one when AK was in town but we got there too late. That time, it was pretty much finished, but we could tell that something cool had definitely gone down — leaves all over the ground, and weird screens set up and so on. So last night I got there well in time, and it had bunch of different, interesting things…

First off, there was a stage with bands, DJ’s, etc. and 3 giant screens being VJ’d behind them…pretty cool, the visuals were amazing, but I wanted the music to be better…

In another room, they had a large inflatable pool filled with inky-black water. People would get into a bathing suit, stretch out on some kind of weird rack, and then get submerged into the pool. As this was happening, behind them on a giant screen, somehow a computer was tracking what their body looked like in the water. In realtime. It was really wild. Kind of like Minority Report, or as someone next to me remarked, "It’s a Hybrid!"

This low-fi cellphone movie doesn’t do it justice, and you can only just see the screen at the end, but here, check it:

I should also mention that it was $15 to get in, but then it was open bar(!!), which was nice. So the music was decent, the ink bath was wild, but really, in my mind the real money-maker, the thing that made it all worth it, was Boozbot.

A robot bartender!!!! I got in line and a guy next to me said "A robot bartender?" and for some reason I answered by saying "Finally." Because really, shouldn’t we have had this before? The experience was amazing. You got up to Boozbot and there was a list of drinks he could make (vodka straight, vodka tonic, vodka tonic and cran) next to a USB mic. You’d speak into the mic and Boozbot would chat with you for a bit. When he talked they had this small screen animating an 8-bit graphic-y mouth, and he spoke (naturally) though a metallic speech synthesizer.

There was obviously someone watching you through his camera eyes, ‘cuz Boozbot would talk about your appearance, and make conversation with you that wasn’t computer-based. After talking to him for a bit he’d make your drink by dispensing the quantities of ingredient through the plastic tubes at the end of his hand (see that in the pic)? It was so much fun.

Later in the evening, quite randomly, I ended up running into the guy who made Boozbot and having a conversation with him. He wasn’t geeky at all, more of a space-case type, and really friendly and cool. I was trying to ask about how much Boozbot could actually do on his own and —

"You mean how autonomous he is?" the guy cut me off.

"Right. How autonomous is he?"

"Well actually it would be illegal for him to be completely autonomous because to serve alcohol you need to be able to id people. So he’s only semi-autonomous. But damn I would love to see the cops arresting him for being completely autonomous!"

"Yeah, that would be a great court scene…Boozbot taking the stand…"

I then told him that I was going to borrow his idea and take it out to Burning Man, which he said was fine, so I’m stoked for that. I’ve already got some mods that I think would make it a better experience, so now all I have to do is solve the engineering issue of regulated hydraulic pumps to make the drinks. I think my dad could probably help me out with that, so it’s on. But I can’t call him Boozbot ‘cuz that’d be downright stealing. And it’s too bad, ‘cuz what a perfect name. 

Maybe Robooze? Johnny 500 proof? Liquorbot? Drink-a-tron? Robartender?

Help me out people…

UPDATE – It should be pointed out that when I presumptuously speak of borrowing the idea of Boozbot, I am more speaking to the spirit of the idea, and not to that actual execution. I just read a fascinating blog entry on how Boozbot works, and I love the complexity of it, but it’s…how can I put this?…a bit out of my skill set. Only time will tell whether this is a project that comes to life…

Yes, I have had a job where I had to blur out the naughty bits. It is both more and less fun than you would think.

This is genius v. clever.

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The track is "Toe Jam" by The Brighton Port Authority (BPA) feat. David Byrne and Dizzy Rascal.

Wow, that’s quite a "featuring" section, huh? The BPA myspace has more songs on it, with witty titles like "Should I Stay or Should I Blow". Nice.

EDIT – my first sentence refers to a job in the past…I didn’t actually make this music vid, as much as I would love to lay claim to it…

Related to the post on Super Pii Pii Brothers below, I wanted to tell a quick story…

I went yesterday to try and get a replacement social security card (lost mine) and the line was absurdly enormous. I asked the guard when was the best time to show up, and he said at 7am, when they open. So this morning I dragged myself onto my bike and rode over. Sure enough, there were hardly any people there, and I was able to get my form in with minimal hassle.

Two things of note happened:

1. They make you go through a metal detector and put your bag through one of those x-ray machines. It turned out that I had a fork in my bag, left there from when I was working at Sundance and getting salads every day — I got tired of wasting the plastic forks they would always give me, so I brought in my own. I’d wash it every day and leave it in the edit suite where I was working. It was great.

Sidenote: Apparently if you want cashiers at Cosi to think you are nuts, tell them you don’t need a fork with your salad. They will look at you as though there’s no other way to eat the damn thing you idiot!

Anyway, I had forgotten to to take it out of my bag. The guard manning the x-ray looked me dead serious in the eye and said "We can’t let you take a fork in here." Even at 7am the guards are paid for one thing only: to be serious. I love it. I took the fork out, and put it outside the office door on Fulton St, downtown Brooklyn. Just up against the wall near some other trash, figuring I’d get it on my way out.

I was in there for less than an hour. It was 7:30am. The fork was gone.

I love this town.

2. As I was standing at the window while the guy processed my form, I let my eyes wander around to look at the official-type office notices they had on the walls. One was this nice glossy poster that said "Beware! Everyone wants a piece of the Pii!" Then underneath it there were a number of photos with small text under them.

A photo of a pie on an oven rack (seriously). Then a photo of what looked like some filled-in forms. Finally a photo of a shredder. Hmmm. I really focused my eyes and was finally able to make out the words, under the large bold "PII", "Personal Identity Information". It was all about identity theft.

But I couldn’t stop thinking how great it would be if it was actually referring to Super Pii Pii Bros. Because you know, I’m pretty sure everyone does want a piece of the Pii.

I wanted to sneak a cell phone photo of it, but you know, the vibe didn’t feel too right. If they’re not allowing forks in there, I don’t think they’d like me taking photos of their Pii.