9.19.2007

Seize Them! 9.8.07 free download available

Seize Them! 9/8/07

Seize Them!'s 9.8.07 show from our house party is now available for free download in .mp3 and FLAC formats from seizethem.com. Share and enjoy.

This show was a lot of fun and I think we rocked it, some sloppiness aside. And I broke my D string about a minute and a half into Ramble Tamble, so the rest of the song has a bit of a noisy vibe which fits in perfectly with the audible shout of "Sonic Youth didn't need to tune!" provided by my friend-in-the-audience Zach.

9.17.2007

i do good work

Last week I completed work on Carolyn Sills' (of Boss Tweed fame) video entry for Showtime's Homegrown Humor contest. I give you Little Brooklyn Country Boxes for your enjoyment:


PLEASE go check it out on its page on the Homegrown Humor site, and leave us supportive comments and a high rating. It doesn't make a difference in the actual contest, but it sure feels good.

Supposedly the semifinalists are chosen today. I'm trying to not care too much.


And guess what? ANOTHER of my travel photos has been picked up by Schmap for one of their travel guides. Budapest, this time, and the photo actually has me in it!
Statue Park 2
I should mention that this photo was actually taken by my good friend Cristian Villalobos.
And here it is, in situ, on Schmap's site. It's easy to be popular when you work for free!

televisual interWOW

Something like that.
The Emmy Awards were aired last night. I think I was most amused by Fox's "dump sphere"... the awkward cutaway of a black globe hanging above the audience that they used whenever they needed to dump what was being said on stage. Sure, they COULD have used a simple shot of the audience but why not make it incredibly obvious that you're censoring your broadcast? Now we'll never know what joke Ray Romano made about Kelsey Grammer and/or his new show, or what the end of Sally Field's sentence was after she started making an antiwar statement or... I think there was at least one more dump but I can't recall what it was. Anyway, nice one, Fox. Did you stick the intern on the censoring duty or something?

But seriously, folks: congratulations to the winners. First and foremost, congratulations to my friend Glenn Clements for his part in bringing home an Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Series Emmy for The Daily Show, and also to my ex-professor Sam Pollard for his Outstanding Picture Editing for Nonfiction Programming award (shared with Geeta Gandbhir and Nancy Novack), and his Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking award, both for When The Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts.

I was happy to see 30 Rock take home the award for Outstanding Comedy Series, which it deserved, and I doubt that happens to a series in its first season very often. Al Gore now has an Emmy, too, for his work with Current TV. It's nice to see the Emmys pay some respect to internet-based video entertainment but, honestly, I don't know anyone watching or using Current.

I'm sure it'll shock most of you to know that I'm more interested in the less glamorous awards won by the crews of these programs. Rome, one of my favorite recent programs, won a cinematography award as well as art direction and hair styling. Congrats to David Rogers and Dean Holland for their well-deserved editing award for their work on The Office. I'd congratulate Elena Maganini on her editing win for Dexter, but I haven't gotten around to watching the series yet.

Finally, the last words I ever have to say about Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip. I received some snarky comments a while back claiming that Studio 60... MUST be a good show because the pilot episode won some Canadian TV award. I disagreed, of course. That commenter must take some pleasure in the fact that the show was nominated for a few Emmys: Outstanding Casting For A Drama Series, Outstanding Cinematography For A Single-camera Series, Outstanding Directing For A Drama Series, and Outstanding Guest Actor In A Drama Series (twice, and John Goodman won, kudos to him). I can't argue with the cinematography nod, as the level of craft was certainly exceptional there. The directing nod was for the pilot, again. The pilot of that series was undoubtedly its best episode, and congratulations to Thomas Schlamme, but the pilot is not a series and the series was crap. As far as the one award the show did win... well, what does it say about a series that gained its highest recognition for a guest appearance by a respected actor?

Thus endeth my Emmy-related logorrhea.

9.10.2007

i'll sleep someday

The good people at Schmap have decided to include another one of my photos in their Schmap Guides. This time it's the Prague Schmap, and they've used this picture of St. Vitus Cathedral:
St. Vitus Cathedral 2
Here it is, incorporated into the actual guide.

Saturday night we had one of our three-floor parties at the house, and it went quite well. DJ Porkcube opened the festivities with a two-hour-long set of booty-shakers (which you, lucky dog, can download and enjoy), then Mindspray set up in the top-floor apartment and rocked the hip and the hop for a while to the enjoyment of many. Our ex-roommate Josh, who was tragically killed by a hit and run driver a couple of years ago, used to be part of Mindspray so it was cool to have them in the house, as it were, again. Seize Them! also has a song about Josh, so there was an interesting synchronicity there.

Speaking of the band, we rocked it hard. I think we played really well, and I'm bummed that my carefully-set up recording system crapped out on me about thirty seconds into the first song. Worked fine during rehearsal, so I'm doubly annoyed. But the people who could stand to be in the basement while we played seemed to enjoy themselves, and we got a lot of good compliments. We tried out a new song which doesn't have any lyrics yet but certainly will by the time we play The Underscore next month.

No pictures from the party have come into my possession as yet.


Naomi Klein and Alfonso Cuaron have teamed up for a short film to promote Klein's new book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. The basic thesis, as expressed in the short embedded below, seems to be that there is a parallel between the methods used by interrogators to shock prisoners into childlike states and corporatist exploitation of crisis to gain popular acceptance for Milton Friedman-style capitalist "reforms". You may or may not enjoy the book, but this short is great:

9.06.2007

my, the world certainly is full of things!

Producer-in-extraordinary Degoao (also of OUCH fame) hosted a dee-lightful event at The Lucky Cat in Williamsburg last night.
DJ Porkcube @ The Lucky Cat
DJ Porkcube started it all off with a set full of frenchy electro beats which, had a critical mass of people been achieved, would certainly have had everybody grooving.
Don Red @ The Lucky Cat
Don Red got up on stage next to treat us with a rare solo acoustic set of old favorites backed by new Donner-produced rhythm tracks (featuring jm). A priceless moment when a girl emerged from the bathroom, having missed Don's intro to the next song, and turned around in surprise to gawp at the stage when the first lyric, "I want to fuck you 'til you die", roared from the PA. Don, as he reminded us, is not afraid to swear in song titles.


And then there's Ronald Jenkees and his squinty style. There's not much I can say about him that isn't said by the following youtube clip, so I'll leave it at that other than thanking the folks at BoingBoing for pointing him out.



Hey, guess what! In the late fifties the US Air Force was funding probably-highly-unethical and distasteful research into torture! What a SURPRISE! Anyway, here's a link to a never-reprinted but widely cited book outlining the results of said research titled The Manipulation of Human Behavior. Sorry that it's formatted as an html file for some inexplicable reason, but that's how I received it and that is how I pass it along to you. Enjoy? GET SOME (Torture Manual)

9.02.2007

nobody understands the Irish quite like the Japanese

It's been a big couple of weeks here in Infidelia.

Last weekend my creative partner Jeff and I went down to Cary, North Carolina to shoot more footage for our feature documentary project. Our hosts/subjects were Will and Leah Woods, many thanks to them, and we shot about 7.5 hours (times two cameras) of coverage. On the pile it goes with the Tedd and Christa material from February and May. Next up is Columbus Day in Portland, Oregon, and it should be great.

While we were gone the Seize Them! stickers arrived. They look like this:

Seize Them! sticker


The good people at High Water Media have already begun strategically placing the Seize Them! sigil all over town. For example:

Vehicles Will Be Impounded


The stickers will be on sale at shows for $1, but I imagine we'll give away or stick up far more than we'll ever sell.

Speaking of the band, Seize Them! will be rockin' a house party at The Jam Factory (aka home) on September 8. Short notice, but we're hoping people turn up for a good time. Our upstairs neighbor Justin has been working on his VJing skills and said something about employing a distribution amplifier and a bunch of cable to spread his videoicty down to our floor.

For what it's worth (which is, apparently, a good deal to promoters), the band now has 1,502 "friends" on myspace (also 2110 "plays"... you have to listen to 1/4 of a track to have it counted as a "listen"). I've already been exposed to some rad Japanese bands like The Croagh Patrick (Dropkick Murphy's-like Irish rock with japanese lyrics), and Sitha (electro / new-wavey stuff). Invite us over for a tour, y'all!

This Wednesday the 5th the man that is the incredible Degoao is curating a booty-shaker at The Lucky Cat in Williamsburg featuring Don Red and DJ Porkcube. Recommended highly. By me.