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March 30, 2005
March 28, 2005
Sunshine in Minnie...
After a ridiculously early alarm got me out of bed at 4am, I caught a flight to Minneapolis for a strategy meeting at corporate. Surprisingly, the weather is gorgeous, and even in the evening it's still in the 60's I think. I have to say, Minneapolis never really dissapoints. It has an unexpected energy, in spite of being located in the god-forsaken-who-built-a-town-here? sort of place. Anyway, here is the view from my room, snapped in a couple of images on my camera phone and spliced together in Fireworks.
March 25, 2005
Friday Fun.
Ok, it's Friday folks. If you need to kill a few minutes in your cubicle, well here ya go!
Check out this BRILLIANT series of online ads for JC Online that are just waaayyyy too cool for school. It's the sort of media production that just leaves me feeling dazzled, dumb, and useless. Click on the "The Commercials" section. Enjoy... CLICK HERE.
mattLandia Photogalleries.
Ok. I'm a big fat geek. Every now and then I get an idea for something that I should learn how to do (i.e. this blog) and this week it was learning how streamline the production of my photogalleries. For anyone interested, I highly recommend using the freeware called Simple Viewer, developed by Airtight Interactive.
Check out the new gallery format by clicking on the 'GALLERY' icon on the right. Let me know what you think!
March 20, 2005
American Minor.
Preface: I'm a guitar tone snob. It's one of the few things that's still left over from my days playing with Shimmerzine. Anyone can buy a Marshall stack and crank the volume. Few can pick the right Marshall speaker, the right Marshall head, and then match the rig to a guitar that emotes the beauty of it's original design. (Translation: Buying paint doesn't make you a painter).
Entry: Saturday night I went to see Soundtrack Of Our Lives (SOOL) play at Smith's Old Bar. I fully expected I would have to write an entry about how amazing they are, how much energy they ooze on stage, and how their lead singer looks like a Viking who's been hitting the nitrous oxide a bit too often. And well, SOOL was all those things. You should buy their record, and try to see them as soon as you can.
The real reason for writing this entry however, is to tell you how amazed I was with the first band of the evening, American Minor. I LOVE stumbling across a band that helps me validates my ongoing love affair with music. In short, here are 5 things you should know about American Minor.
1 - They KNOW classic guitar tone. I'm talking about that sultry buzz, that electric syrup, that siren call -- you know the sound. You heard it from Hendrix. Zepplin. Skynnard. Allman Brothers. Odds are if you grew up south of the Mason Dixon line, you got sweaty in the back seat of a car to this tone.
2 - They are the embodiment of what I thought rock bands would always would look like.. In a sea of indie-rock scenesters, all five band members look like members of the bands I'm sure they worshipped growing up. They are: Lanky. Long haired. Bearded. Young-ish. And into their thing.
3 - They are from nowhere West Virginia.
4 - Josh Gragg (guitarist) has a righteous mustache. And if you don't know how I feel about a mustache... well, you haven't been reading here long have you?
5 - "Buffalo Creek" is song that makes the southern music gods very, very happy. You can listen to their whole EP on their website - check it out.
March 16, 2005
On Canada and Synchronized swimming...
If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia.
--Margaret Atwood, Canadian writer
I stumbled across this hilarious article written by Matt Labash entitled, Welcome to Canada in the Weekly Standard.
As I perused the article, this paragraph jumped out and struck my nationalist funny bone, prompting a full read of Mr. Labash's insightfull essay on our Canadian neighbors:
"If we have bothered forming opinions at all about Canadians, they've tended toward easy-pickings: that they are a docile, Zamboni-driving people who subsist on seal casserole and Molson. Their hobbies include wearing flannel, obsessing over American hegemony, exporting deadly Mad Cow disease and even deadlier Gordon Lightfoot and Nickelback albums. You can tell a lot about a nation's mediocrity index by learning that they invented synchronized swimming. Even more, by the fact that they're proud of it."
Enjoy...
March 15, 2005
The Narcolepsy Twins.
It's sooo unfair. Every weeknight, Boris and Natasha simultaneously crash wherever they may be. On the couch, on the floor, on the bed - wherever. It used to happen around 11pm, but over the last few months "narco-time" has been creeping into primetime. I've watched the glaze come cascading over their eyes as early as 8:30 or 9!
I, on the other hand, don't easily fall asleep and am left fighting my way past the two zombies pictured below, hoping to scratch out a sliver of sleeping space on my King-sized matress. Natasha sets herself into a cuddle-ready state of non-movement and Boris gives me the extended stiff-paw to the back. What teamwork! The irony: I can't get to sleep because of those who are sleeping.
March 10, 2005
That Alabama Sloss - Part 2
Today, I received a link from my fellow photo geek Divine about an aspect of Sloss Furnaces (see previous post) that I was not aware of. Turns out that this is a significantly haunted location, with many sightings of ghosts and other paranormal activity. Go ahead, click on this link and read a little bit for yourself before continuing with this post.
SO.. with that in mind, let me replay a bit of conversation that was had while exploring some of the darkest underground chambers at Sloss.
SETTING: Machine room that is partially submerged in green mossy water. Two naked light bulbs hung at the entrance and exit of the building offer weak blankets of light. The majority of the cavernous room is obscure, littered with the abandoned carcasses of dead machines.
ME: (in hushed excitement) Can you believe this place? I mean, can you BELIEVE we are allowed to be down here?!
DIVINE: (equally excited) I know I know!
ME: Stop. Listen. (we both stop moving). Can you hear the water dripping? Oh man, I wish I had a way to record this. You can almost hear the age of the room.
DIVINE: This is cool This is so cool. This is soo cool.
ME: (walking to edge of light and squinting into the dark) There's no way I can shoot without a flash in here. I'm going to lean out here into the dark and shoot blindly with a flash. I wonder what I'll see?
DIVINE: Go for it.
ME: (snapping away flash bursts into darkness, revealing old pipes and hazy shawdows) Hey, wouldn't it be crazy if I found unexplained faces in darkeness of my pics once I took a better look at them!
If this had been a movie, at this point a crazy moss beast would have burst of the shadows and eaten me whole, leaving nothing behind except my Canon camera strap.
I also find it extremely unsettling that I named a number of my photos "Ghost Hall", "Ghost Widget", "Ghost Corpse", and "Ghost Drippings" without having the faintest idea that this very tunnel is considered one of the most haunted areas of Sloss.
Hmmm... Coincidence or AM I NOW A ZOMBIE UNDER CONTROL OF THE SLOSS GHOST!? You be the judge.
March 08, 2005
The Alabama Sloss.
On Sunday, my friend and fellow shutterbug took to the asphalt and travelled to The Sloss Furnaces in Birmingham, Alabama. The Sloss Furnaces are contributed largely to the growth of Birmingham at the turn of the last century, as they were strategically located a crossing of railroads. It's stacks poured smoke over the 'bama horizon for many years.
Although now defunct, the Furnaces are open to the public. And by open, I mean OPEN. We climbed rickety catwalks and welded iron ladders to the highest reaches of the furnaces. We walked down dark, moss laden stairs into the deep cool of darkened machine rooms. I found the whole experience to be a sensory overload.
My eyes gorged themselves on the myriad patterns, textures, shapes, minute detail and behemoth size of what was once a living iron vomiting industrial wonder. At every turn, I was engaged by color, shadow, depth and detail.
The place smelled of metal, dirt, water and moss. As we moved through the caverns of mechanical solitude, I walked from one olfactory experience to the next.
When I closed my eyes and stood very still, there was an orchestra of alien noise to my ears. The distant dripping of water. The wind winding gently through girders, drums, and welded plates producing varying tones of murmer. The creaking of metal stairs and I cautiously stepped from one room to the next.
In all, I took around 200 photos. Of those, I'm only keeping 25 or so. In my excitement, I often rushed the shot or opted out of using my tripod when I should have taken the time to set it up. Click on the photo above (or here) to see the photos I'm keeping.
If you ever have the chance to visit... do.
March 05, 2005
Shay's B-Day Lounge.
Last night we went out to celebrate Shay's annual re-celebration of her 28th birthday. If you click on the photo above, you can check out some of the photos from the evening's festivities. We ate at Sala first. Natasha and I shared an appetizer platter that was pretty decent. Not impressive, but fairly priced I suppose. Shay faired much better with her Turkey and Mole dinner. Very tasty!
After dinner we headed downtown to the top floor of the Hilton, to partake in the cosmic lounge stylings of the Wickersham POV. It was.. well... lounge. Surrounded by terrible 80's cruise ship decor, we hung out, sipped coctails, and enjoyed each other's company. Casey and I geeked out and talked cameras most of the time. He got some awesome short movies of a particular patron who was expressing herself through insane dance moves. I wonder if she just saw Napoleon Dynamite?
As the night went deeper, the group grew larger and we found ourselves at 97 Astoria till last call. The drive home was uneventful (except for Natasha's moanings about desperately needing to pee). A decent friday night.
March 02, 2005
New Look and Feel.
Ok, so I guess I don't really need to write about this if you're looking at the blog right now. I got bored with my old layout, so I thought I would try something new. Figured it was time for a new mustache shot at the very least!
Speaking of new look and feel, I'm surprised that no one has made a stink about John Travolta's magically growing hair this past week. He was on Letterman last week with very short hair, a la Caesar cut. Then on the Oscars, his hair looked remarkably like the hair he's sporting in the 'Be Cool'trailer, and then on Regis and Kelly today he was back to short hair. Duh-what?! I can't believe no one called him out on it. Wussies. More evidence that Scientologists are to LA what the Mob is to NYC.