this is josh g

Author: jjosh (Page 47 of 52)

internet meme: wound

June 3, 2008 / / 0 Comments

My favorite wound:

I was 16, working as a prep cook at The Rustic Inn and one night I had to train a new cook. I can’t remember the woman’s name, but she was nice enough, I guess. One of the things we prep cooks were responsible for was to slice a load of ham and swiss for the evening’s Chicken Cordon Bleus. I was showing her how to work the slicer, which was one of those classic, giant deli slicers with the rotating blade and metal handle to hold whatever you’re slicing.

It wasn’t going very well. I was trying to demonstrate to her exactly how to slice it, what thickness to set the blade to and so on, but the cheese kept kind of sliding out of the handle mechanism. So I, playing it cool, was all like "Of course, sometimes the handle won’t hold it, so you just sort of use your hand to keep it steady." And I reached up and held it with my left hand. 

On the next slice, my hand went too far and the outside of my left pinky finger slid into the slicer. It was so quick, sharp, and smooth that I didn’t even notice what was happening for a second. I think I only realized what was happening when I saw the blood spin around the rotating blade and splatter the cheese. Ick. I pulled my hand back quickly, and saw that it hadn’t gone all the way through, that the skin was still attached.

"Umm, no problem, you know, no big deal…"

"Are you sure? It kind of looks pretty bad…"

And I grabbed some paper towel and wrapped it around my finger, where it quickly became blood-soaked. My finger didn’t hurt at all, but my humiliation at looking like an idiot was acute.

When it healed it scarred over very strangely.

Many years later, when I learned what the word hubris meant, I was able to retroactively categorize many incidents in my life as pertaining to hubris. This was one of them.

buoy-ant

June 2, 2008 / / 4 Comments

June’s banner photo is from a few weeks ago when Maxine and I spent a day and a half at NC’s Outer Banks…we first came across the buoy at night and it was really scary, looking like a spaceship washed up on the shore. Apparently it washed up a few months prior when NC had some serious storm waves.

We ran into people later who told us that it costs a million dollars to haul a buoy back out to sea when it beaches like that. And that if the serial number can be read, then they can tell which agency is responsible for it (coast guard, etc.); if the serial number is unreadable (quite likely) then nobody takes responsibility and they just leave the darn thing on the shore! It was massive and striking on the beach.

hi five alive

June 2, 2008 / / 3 Comments

Does the hi-five seem particularly egotistical? It’s a way for two people to somehow share in a self-congratulatory moment and also turn that moment into a big public display. "Hey lookit us, we did something great!" And yet, when done unselfconsciously, or in the true joy of a moment, it is somehow, fantastic. A pure form of "Yesss!"

I love the idea of the hi-five unironically (I think), though it should be reserved only for the best occasions.

This is one of those occasions.

[flv:/video/hi_five.flv 320 240]

from Will Ferrel’s picks at funnyordie.com…I saw this almost a month ago and it won’t leave my head!

wigu-licious

May 31, 2008 / / 0 Comments

In 2004 when I went to the Small Press Expo (SPX) in Bethesda, MD I did a couple of things. I met Carla Speed McNeil, met another guy named Thor (my alter ego, I’ll tell you all about it later), and had a great conversation with Jeff Rowland who is the writer/artist of Wigu. I had so much fun talking to him that I bought one of his books, thoroughly enjoyed it, and now follow Wigu online. He recently started a new storyline, and I heartily recommend it…it starts here…

This description from Wikipedia is too good not to share:

The comic is centered on the adventures of a little boy named Wigu Tinkle and his family. Each chapter of the comic represents one day in Wigu’s life. Wigu is an intelligent child with an active imagination who uses much of his free time to watch television and play video games, where he encounters the beings of Butter Dimension³, primarily the intergalactic heroes Topato (a flying potato whose catch phrase is "Spring into action!" and whose primary defense mechanism consists of being made entirely of poison) and Sheriff Pony (an eloquent Space Pony who, as the storyline reveals, excretes vanilla ice cream instead of fecal waste).

Wigu has a teenage sister, Paisley, who is the stereotypical goth girl, though insists her being a nihilist is entirely different. She actively seeks out depression and angst. Wigu’s father Quincy makes money by composing music for porno movies. He is also a bodybuilder and tends to walk around without a shirt, which sometimes gets him into trouble.

whitewash brainwash

May 29, 2008 / / 3 Comments

Displacements by Michael Naimark.

Here’s how to do this:

1. fill a room with stuff, camera in the middle, on a rotating platform

2. slowly move the camera around, filming stuff in the room

3. paint everything in the room white

4. put a projector on the platform and turn it around at the same rate, projecting the film of the objects onto the objects themselves…

nice.

[flv:/video/displacements.flv 480 320]

embedded vimeo, via

the speed of speed

May 29, 2008 / / 1 Comment

I always wanted to get Carla Speed McNeil together with Timothy Speed Levitch and have them hang out and talk about what it’s like to be called Speed. Speed Levitch was a metaphysical tour guide of NYC, and subject of the fantastic documentary The Cruise.

I first met Speed out at Burning Man (my sister pointed him out to me — thanks, Katie!), then ran into him a bunch of times soon after (he gave a tour for Silver Spring, MD’s Silverdocs!), got handed his book, and was finally able to go on a tour with him in December 2003 (the day after Santarchy!). It was a walking tour of the West Village in NYC, and was such a blast…Mike H, Alan M, his wife and I walked the chilly streets, listened while Speed did his thing, and ended up for beers at Chumley’s (now closed!).

He also gave me one of the best pieces of advice for The Advice Project: "run wild with your healing." Nice.

I’ve tried to keep track of Speed since then, but his phone numbers get disconnected, his websites go down, he vanishes. I recently heard that he was out in San Fransisco doing tours, but couldn’t find any info about it. Then this morning I found this, which is great:

[flv:/video/speedL.flv 320 240]

I love the bit about Macy’s. Of course, the website listed at the end is defunct, and the phone number goes to the voicemail of someone named Keith, but Maxine and I will be out in SF late in July, so I’m gonna try and track him down for a tour. He does have a blog, such as it is, and there’s an e-mail on there, so maybe that’ll work. We’ll see.

UPDATE – I just tried searching for Speed’s Richard Linklater-directed short film "Live From Shiva’s Dance Floor" (about SL’s idea for a 9/11 memorial involving grazing bison on the World trade Center site) but couldn’t find it anywhere, not youtube, rapidshare or even a torrent! When that happens these days it actually makes me mad. It should be online somewhere! Somebody DO SOMETHING!

time to get your PhD

May 19, 2008 / / 9 Comments

I think this is the best mix I’ve done. Started in October, this is officially 2007’s mix, but you can dig it in 2008! It leans heavily on mashups and hiphop, because that’s where I think the most interesting and innovative music is happening these days…

Enjoy! Lemme know whatcha think…

(right-click or ctrl-click to download zip file of audio mp3s and cover art jpg)

Psychedelic Hiphop Dubplate

UPDATE – it has been suggested that I should point out that I made a lot of the mashups myself…enjoy!

when I get that feeling I need virtual healing

May 19, 2008 / / 2 Comments

joshgranger.com science corrospondent Pat G returns with a link to an article that suggests the reason aliens haven’t contacted us yet is that they’re probably all geeking out in their own virtual worlds. You could make an awesome virtual world that does everything you could ever want it to, and then you wouldn’t have to bother with expending all the energy to go to other planets or build more crap on your own planet.

When the conversation gets to environmental concerns (as it often does in our house), I often feel that to have hope in the face of such disaster requires a fundamentalist faith in technology. Sometimes I have to break it down like "Well, I honestly think that this crises might be the thing that spurs us to space travel to colonize other planets." And I’m not really joking, you know? But now I think this virtual reality angle is so much more energy effecient, it will become my new go-to. A bit harder to explain, but perhaps a bit easier to absorb than the whole "other planets will save us" theory.

It reminded me of this chilling scene from Carla Speed McNeil’s amazing sci-fi comics epic, Finder. If you are into comics at all and don’t know Finder, you must go and get it and get into it now. Now, I say! It is amazing. She’s the only comics person that I actually went to a convention to meet. Check her website, lightspeedpress.com, she’s got first chapters from many of her books there for you to check out, or you can order the trades from her. I recommend starting from the beginning with Sin-Eater. It’s so dense and amazing…

Anyway, this scene is from "Dream Sequence", and it shows the extension of all this thought, introducing a character who goes to work in a virtual world, in a sort of cubicle farm. It really stuck in my head because it seems so plausible…

the dead center of town

May 18, 2008 / / 0 Comments

The weather in Savannah was gorgeous for the three days we were there. Upper 70’s, nice breeze, low humidity, sunny skies. We had lucked into some kind of early week special at our B&B (the meta-named "Bed & Breakfast Inn") that resulted in our getting a swanky room with a balcony. We’d go down and have breakfast, then come back up and start the morning slowly on the balcony — reading, enjoying an early morning beer, or just sitting in a rocking chair with Grits, the B&B cat. Then we’d stumble into Savannah and walk around like we were in a dream.

Savannah lent itself to this feeling because it was full of weird, old houses and friendly, eccentric people. Savannah is home to the house that Disney based the Haunted Mansion on, is full of churches and beautiful squares that slow down traffic, and features giant old trees that fairly drip with Spanish Moss. 

One afternoon as we were coming out of Colonial Cemetery, we saw a strange vehicle driving slowly down the street. It looked to be a modified Hearse, with people’s heads sticking up out of it and a guy in front speaking through a microphone like one of the passionate crazies right out of Slacker. There was a phone number on the back; we called and booked the midnight tour the following night.

We did a lot of fun things in Savannah, but the Hearse tour is definitely up there as far as originality. It was in a real, modified, formerly working Hearse. We rode where the bodies had been.

Our driver was a large, red-headed, long-haired, death-metal-t-shirt wearing guy named Nate. Or, as one girl called out as we drove by, "BIGG Nate!!!!" And Nate gave us a chilling tour of a damn spooky city. Also notable for driving us into the ghetto to see, as Nate put it, "the ghosts of burned down crack houses."

Walking home around 12:30, we accidentally walked near a house that had featured in one of Nate’s more memorable tales. It was chilling, and we picked up the pace. Then, as we got closer to our B&B, we came across one of the squares that had a particularly scary story about a ghost of child that supposedly haunted it.

Maxine wouldn’t let us go anywhere near the square, and we were glad to get back to our room, our beer, and Grits.

the South

May 13, 2008 / / 2 Comments

Hi, no posts for a while I’m afraid as Maxine and I have road-tripped ourselves to the South! We had a lovely stay with my ole pal Jack, his expectant wife Kara and amazing dog Morton (who we miss terribly!) in Durham, NC, and we have now forged on like Sherman to Savannah, GA. Also like Sherman, we have spared Savannah from our path of destruction and are loving how great it is here. It feels surreal and serene, like living in a storybook of some sort…

Posting should resume next week, but in the meantime, here’s a track from Jack’s former band, The Diplomats, that he recorded a while back with Mitch Easter(!) — producer of the first two REM albums! It sounds pretty great…

(The Diplomats – Chris Bell)

[audio:Chris_Bell.mp3]

Also, here’s a picture of a hook-rug of a cat holding a pumpkin that we saw at a market in Raleigh, NC. Both cat and pumpkin are nervous for some reason.

Awesome.

See you next week!

bugs! bug me…

May 7, 2008 / / 2 Comments

In February, right when I had started the blog, I was working on a project at Sundance Channel when I saw an editor working on these amazing Isabella Rossellini short pieces based on the sex life of bugs(!!). They are weird and amazing. Yes, they have that sort of "consciously viral" quality to them (i.e., "I’m a big business but I’m making something weird so it gets forwarded around the internet!"), but luckily Isabella R is so over-the-top and great that it doesn’t matter.

I immediately thought I would grab them from the edit room and post them on my blog before they were even out! I had just started my blog, and already a real scoop! This was going to be great!

Then I realized that Sundance would know it was me and I really like working there (still, I kinda feel, as Gillanders would say, "the old Josh would have done it."). So I’ve been patiently biding my time for them to have an official release and now it has happened. Here is a brief sampling of two of them, bee and snail. Find the rest on the Sundance site here.

(For some reason they’re not available outside the US, which has caused a bit of a stink on the internets (old-school rights management in a new school world)…someone on boingboing provides a workaround to the original flv’s here)

[flv:/video/green_porno_bee.flv 489 281]

[flv:/video/green_porno_snail.flv 489 281]

dr. banner

May 5, 2008 / / 0 Comments

This month’s banner picture was taken at MOMA’s Olafur Eliasson exhibit, "Take Your Time". It’s a bunch of light, color and mirror based installations that have to do with the perception of perceiving (apparently). The banner picture was taken in a room that had these weird and intense lights that made everything look either yellow or black. It really messed with your eyes, but in a good way.

Picture to the left was this odd balcony that looked as though it was over an infinitely deep chasm, but was really just clever mirrors. Click here for bigger pic.

Great exhibit.

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