Friday, November 30, 2001

Before I was a Waits-head, way before I was into punk, before rap existed or techno or slowcore or mathrock, and decades before I began mycurrent infatuations with reggae, dub, minimal electronica, and turntablism, I loved the Beatles. I used to play my parents albums (and probly scratch the hell out of 'em), listening for hours to Abbey Road, the White Album & Sgt. Pepper's. Rubber Soul (along with Highway 61 Revisited) was one of the first albums that I owned myself and played on a rinky-dink Mickey Mouse (literally) record player. "Think for yourself / cuz I won't be there with you" is the only George Harrison penned song on that album. He was always my favorite Beatle--probably cuz I identified with him: quiet and seeming like the underdog. I used to take the Beatles very seriously, and George was, as an individual, always the prime focus of my attention. There was the air mystery and reliability to him. He's gone now. And I am thinking, and remembering.

Today's the day of Attaboy's show!! It's going to be great!!!


Wednesday, November 28, 2001

whee! that was FUN!

just back from my Tuesday night gig at the Odeon. Had a Blast! It's been way too long since I DJ'd. The Odeon is the perfect place for a punk-heavy set--Husker Du, Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Pixies (3 tracks, total), Bad Religion, The Fall, Wire, Butthole Surfers, Flipper, X-ray Spex, the Replacements, Bow-wow-wow, The Heartbreakers, Mudhoney, Babes in Toyland, Jesus Lizard, Big Black, and my own hometown heros (from Richmond, VA!) Kepone & More Fire for Burning People were played. But, being the college radiohead that I am, there was a much broader setlist, which included Built to Spill, Prince Far-I, Panacea, Kid 606, Witchman, Amon Tobin, Handsome Boy Modeling School, The Ventures, Kool Keith & DJ Spooky, Low, I am Spoonbender, Bad Livers and a guy from Finland (named Paska) doing an acapella version of "Ace of Spades" by Motorhead. I call that fucking eclectic. With a fucking hat on, to boot! Feedback was good, but then feedback is ALWAYS good!

Monday, November 26, 2001

Hey, cool! The online Illustrated Book of Sexual Records Sexual Superlatives from all around the World. Over 450 entries... complete free of charge! Copyrighted 1974, 1982, 1997.

What a good idea. Now I know about the first erotic coins and
the most controversial U.S. brassiere ad!

Sunday, November 25, 2001

It's nice to continually discover weird stuff I hadn't heard about yet.



IN 1964, ten of the tape-recorded dreams of Dion McGregor were pressed into a record album and released by Decca Records, then one of the largest music companies in the world. The album, aptly entitled The Dream World Of Dion McGregor (He Talks In His Sleep), is a masterpiece of inadvertent surrealism.



Dion McGregor Dreams Again is the sequel to it. I'm not going to buy it, but it's interesting nonetheless. The samples on Amazon's page are worth a listen.

wow. dig these film bits!


Coming up at SF's Roxie Cinema

Tuesday & Wednesday, January 15 & 16

New Rose Hotel



Two large corporations in the future world are fighting to get control over the best minds in the world. An unsettling and surrealistic venture into cyber space (courtesy of William Gibson’s short story), Ferrara’s film is having its theatrical premiere! Starring Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe, Asia Argento, Annabella Sciorra,
John Lurie
. Directed by Abel Ferrara. In Color. 35mm. 92 mins. 1998. Tues at 8:00; Wed at 4:00, 8:00.

Busy Week!



Tuesday night me and DJ Univac will mix it up @ The Odeon. On tap will be everything from punk to darkest dub to ninjatunage--expect a wildride mix that will keep you guessing and walking up asking:  what was that last song?

Link to this


Friday night ATTABOY (w/ some help from me & Tom and many others) launches
the new book I Hate Cartoons! also @ The Odeon


Both nights start at 9pm. at the Odeon.



If you wanted to study up aforehand (or aft, if you read this later) my DJ sets'll probably include more than two tunes from each of the following labels: SST, Mille Plateaux, WordSound, NinjaTune, ThrillJockey, Bubblecore, Extreme.



In other news, plans are coming together for next month's FISTFUL OF TENTACLES party/benefit/performance for the Tentacle Sessions. It's on December 16th & it's going to be great--cut the date out of your calendar, blow it up 100x at kinkos and paste it on your front door. Or something like that.


mikl.

Thursday, November 22, 2001

Are you aware of the Penal Codes in this fundamentalist Islamic regime? What I mean to say is, them Talibanese banned the str-angest things. No kite selling. No chess.
No "any equipment that produces the joy of music".




I wonder how many violations my house would come under, lessee, at least:


  • woman leaves home with her face unveiled (2 counts--and neither of them have husbands to be punished for it!)
  • Chess (lots of counts: 2 sets and 3 or 4 books)
  • Computer (uh, SEVEN at the moment, though 2 are just being housed briefly, not that they would take that as an excuse)
  • VCR (there are 2 here, I'm not sure how they charge people for cinematography if I have stuff on video and it has bad cinematography would that still count? They'd probably frame me, just to make an example.)
  • firecrackers and statue (my roommate Angela used to make sculptures that she burned with firecrackers inside them...I wonder if that counts, and I wonder if the neighbors would squeal?)
  • alcohol (...guilty...)
  • equipment that produces the joy of music (3 stereo type things plus 2 portables plus...could I get double jeopardy for playing music from my computer(s)? At least they didn't ban mp3s!)
  • anything that propagates sex and is full of music (well, I'm off the hook here, I haven't had a Barry White or Sade album in years)
  • wine (yup.)
  • nail polish (I don't have an exact count on it yet, but I'll get the veil-less wonder on it right away--unless there's a ban on tallying! ;-) whoops! I'm sure emoticons wouldn't be allowed.)
  • pictures (um. well, yeh. you mean photos? or bad thrift store art that is in its own way good? oh, and I've got one of bin Laden's mom in a compromising position here somewhere...is that bad? oh. You wanna see it first?)
  • tapes (we got duct, masking, scotch, 8-track, cassette, um, blue duct [that's got another name don't it?] reel-to-reel & splicing, and, oh yeh, the double-sided kind. Ooooooh! RACEY!)
  • sewing catalogs (somewhere, sure, I guess)


The ministry's headquarters were a two-story house with a small, dark jail out front and another in the basement. A second-floor room contains a pile of smashed televisions, and in the room next door, a dressing table taken because the owner had pasted pictures of female Indian singers on the mirror.


This sounds like the first exhibit for a new AfghanMOMA, doesn't it? Maybe we'll find out the whole thing was a conceptual art piece.


Okay, I'm going to start mashing potatoes now.
Happy Thanksgiving! we're going to the Capt's house for dinner.
From The New York Times:

signs of economic improvement though the forecast is still not spectacular and the unemployment rate is expected to continue to increase.

Wednesday, November 21, 2001

For Danielle's birthday I broke into the Cocktail book and it served us very well!!
[As many of you know 6rady designed Cocktail's
webpages back when the Web was run by steam & coca cola].



The drinks in question were Satan's Whiskers and later, when we ran out of a few of the Whisker's ingredients, London Fog. Yes, it's all about GIN (sorry, Dave, I know you're a Gray Goose man).

Delicious! Deadly! Hungover! Unemployed! Bathrobe! mikl!

hiya.



that's all, just wanted to say "hi".

Tuesday, November 20, 2001

IT'S DANIELLE'S BIRTHDAY TODAY!!!!!

Monday, November 19, 2001

The Tentacle Porn Tentacle Session went very well. Thanks to the wonderful Annalee Newitz for a fantastic presentation! And to the inimitable Dr Brown for wisdom and tv game show themes. And to a great audience at the SRO Spanganga scene. Sean, Mike and Melinda (way in the back, on tippie toes trying to peep the screen) from Spanganga were wonderful hosts. Next month's Session will be a special all-star extra-ava-ganza with a multitude of familiar artistic faces. More details as they congeal.

PUT IT ON YOUR CALENDAR

Friday November 30th at the Odeon is the big debut of I Hate Cartoons which features the arty works of Attaboy, Ben Burke, Eric Talbot, Gobler Toys, Mark Martin, Aaron Tompkins, Chris Hicks and Dave Cooper (Fantagraphics!).

Link to this



I'm lending Attaboy a hand putting together an unforgettable event to celebrate an incredible collection of visualgrafffikal thingamahbobs. Just a little advanced warning.



Have you seen AttaboyandBurke.com, by the way? It's cool!

Sunday, November 18, 2001

BlogBack's homepage tells the tale of a generous free service that is both being abused (by a few) and does not have the capacity to support how popular it's gotten. Marcus who runs it has now closed it to new users cuz of the overload. On my side, I'm sorry that more people won't be able to use it (and thankful for just turning it on myself, less than a week ago), but I'm glad that the hopefully the annoyance of Javascript errors when my blogback-linked pages load will be gone. Let's just take a moment to happily appreciate all the cool stuff we get for free on the internet, especially the stuff from individuals as opposed to corporations who only do it cuz that's the level of the road here (e.g. my Real rant will be coming up soon). Here's hoping that Marcus keeps up the service and can find a good way to deal with these challenges. Off to the Tentacle Sessions now!

Do we need another hero? The Tick is back from back. All told this is Tick's third incarnation
for fans, like me, who started with the original comic book. That's if you don't count the figures of ACTION.



In related newz, this week a new Justice League of America series debuts on the Cartoon Network. Though the reviews, at least the ones form self-appointed amateur know-it-alls which are the only ones I trust, are not great. Anyway, like the new tick it's just another development to mock my cable-less-ness, though I'm resolute in my narrow-catching. Besides usually I can get a taste from RealVideo (like the new AbFab series, for instance). However, RealMedia's corporate style bugs me and I'd rather not patronize them. Note to self to rant on that soon. grrrr.


Meanwhile from related browsing I get this tidbit:

"Forest Whitaker is in talks to direct the live-action pic FAT ALBERT, based on Bill Cosby's popular animated series."

that sounds very nice.

Friday, November 16, 2001

For those who perhaps (like me, I'll admit it, dammit!) first
encountered Doonesbury as a kid
(the strip has been around for 30 years now!) when the thought of
Henry Kissinger and humor on the same page seemed an uphill buzzkill
(or for some of you maybe it was James Watt...Dan Quayle?), but haven't
visited the land of Trudeau with an adult mindset, or if you know the
WonderOfWhichISpeak but haven't checked in on the world of Michael & Zonker in a while, I strongly suggest you check out Doonesbury.com ASAP. And in particular note how
he has handled our world post 911. Those comics start
here and its worth reading every single one of them and then waiting
with breath that is baited for midnight when the new one is posted.
From Ground Zero to Mazar-E Sharif, Gary Trudeau takes no
prisoners and nails all hypocrisies, personal and political, with a
multi-colored dry spotlight. Or something. So glad he's around.



Also this one gets special mention as a nice, solid shrub-bash.

so, the problem w/ "blogback" seems to be that it's server is down sometimes, so that is why may run through a meteor shower of javascript errors on the way to loading this page. Sorry about that. If it keeps up, I'll axe it.

So, there's a lot of flash stuff out there now, you know? Enuf that if you don't look at it for a while it just keeps on piling up until one evening you wind up fallling into a vat of it. Tonight I did that. So whenever you feel like losing an hour (on the short side), get a comfortable chair, close all your other programs (you'll need the cpu) and, finally, have sound ON, but start the volume out low, k? You've been warned. On to the cool shit...



Vector lounge's Web Jam is apparently a gathering of topnotchrightnow Flash work. Thanks. The work from the #4 show in Amsterdam is what I bumped into and launched me to all the links below. There's a lot more to explore from the first 3.



flammable jam are responsible for Slap the Monkey on Vector Lounge, and also this funly dumb kung fu game (on the bbc site, so hopefully they got paid); they are based in Scotland. Apparently there's some connection with h69.net, another site with a bunch of Flash, which is mostly just okay and sometimes downright annoying (from the 6 or so I checked out).
OTOH, this puppety skeleton thing by Wireframe Studio is impressive and fun--much better than their homepage which is still under construction, tho it has some cool tools, but its minimal content-wise). But ShapeSquad and most especially Post Panic, who are both outta the Netherlands, really kick my ass.



Another thing that definitely gets my attention on several of these sites/pieces is the music--it actually SOUNDS good! It's not like the first wav of embedded sound on webpages (which can still be found looping endlessly cliche and LOUD on Geocities homepages, etc). Here are songs you've never heard, usually cool hiphop or 'lectronic basic recipies, which are looped well and catchy. I also thank the makers of Flash for getting us back to mousing around--Flash can either be viewed passively or interacted with or frequently in these examples both. WIll you ever find everything that's there? Probably not. Does that make sense for a designer to do when they are trying to sell their services? It's a moot point if the overall effect is so impressive. Sure, it's not great information architecture--but if there's enuf "information" then no one will think there's a problem; that is it's about experience, too. I don't know, it's late, and I'm just waxing on. But I guess what I'm saying is that I like the experience of being thrown into something and having to swim my way out--or thrash about to find my entertainment dinner. Shape my own experience, and foul up joyously my own perceptions. I like forks-in-toasters, at least sometimes. On that clank, g'nite! mikl.

Wednesday, November 14, 2001

Note that True Meaning of Life: Meditation Chamber (which I linked to a few posts, and several months, earlier) and the startling similar Forum 2000 both now only have their archives (temporarily in TML's case?) available. So where can you turn for a live dose of this particular flavor of time wastage? There's always The Conversatron, though not everyone likes it.


Did you know that some people still watch TV?

Just updated the TENTACLE SESSIONS homepage in advance of this Sunday's show. The intervening month has been tumultuous: Cafe Du Nord discontinued the series (on very short notice) and the previously scheduled guest, the esteemed Paul Mavrides, needed to postpone his Tentacle appearnance 'til next spring.

But with grace, coolness, and not-just-a-little aplomb, co-Producer Steven Black pulled a Tentacle out of his hat. Tentacle PORN that is. As it turns out "tentacle porn" is an actual anime sub-genre. In particular it is the hardcore-est of anime porn--of monsters, schoolgirls and, well, a mess. Not fer everybody, but this is a living sub-cultural phenom--and if yer titilated, please come out to the Sessions current shelter from the storm, SPANGANGA (3376 19th Street 'tween Mission & Capp).


Spanganga is the new space run by Sean Kelly of Please Leave the Bronx comedy troupe; neither the space nor the troupe seems to have a webpage currently. So I can only embolden them. Which is ANNOYING (Sean, I know you're reading this!). But here's a mention (and a photo of Sean in a tux) from an old Guardian article.



More later, I'm still fine-tuning the Sessions page.


[Note to all fellow web-monkeyers out there:

Remember the basics, like the W3C's HTML Validator. Gawd. It's like going to the dentist for the first time in years--lookit all that crap in there! Fortunately, it's just a webpage tsk-ing at me, not a medical professional with a sharp instrument.]

Tuesday, November 13, 2001

A few recent reads:

expect more detailed comments later/soon.

I have installed BlogBack so that YOU the reader can post comments. No, don't mention it, no trouble at all.

Monday, November 12, 2001

Okay, so what the heck's going on?

Well, Danielle and I went to France for a month. Now we're back and I'm looking for a job.
We have handed off production duties of the Tentacle Sessions to good and very capable
friends--so the series continues, but we are only tangentially involved.


I have a number of artistic projects in mind, some of which are making it to the drawing board
about now. And communication has lagged at this venue because I've started an email announcement
list on Topica which is where I've been shouting about cool stuff I am doing or know about. Here is where you
can subscribe to that if you'd like.

Saturday, November 10, 2001

new stuff coming soon

I'm going to be posting here a lot more, very soon!

YAY!