stop-gap. filler.

I'm sure, my dear audience, that you have been disappointed with me for not providing a detailed debriefing regarding my recent travels to the Old Countries. I offer my apologies and assurances that such postings are coming once I get my photochemicalcelluloid pictures back from the laboratory.

I can report, however, that I have created a crude web-based showreel of some of my editing work and it can be found here. You'll need Quicktime installed on your machine to watch the clips because Windows Media can suck it. You heard me.

The impetus for bringing the above into existence was an interesting coincidence that happened just prior to flying to San Diego to attend a good friend's wedding. It's not uncommon for mail to come to my house addressed to any one of a number of prior residents and last Friday a box arrived for long-departed Brett which was clearly marked as having been shipped from EBay. Upon opening the box I discovered a well-packed baseball card and thought I should, of course, contact Brett about it. He offered to send me packing materials and postage money but I demurred and told him that, oddly enough, I was going to be in San Diego the next day and that this was clearly a good opportunity to hand-deliver it and catch up.
It was during said catching up that he mentioned that there was a possibility that he could help me get work at Sony Computer Entertainment America editing for them.

So we'll see. I have no expectations, but it's an exciting idea.

takk

Takk: it´s basically the only Icelandic word I know.
But yes! Here I am in Reykjavík. Mission Amsterdam was a complete success, and Mission Iceland is progressing expensively.
A possible report following tonight´s runtur is... well, possible.

wachtwoord

Hello. Mission Amsterdam in progress.
More later.

more more seize them!

I am harnessing the massive marketing power of last.fm.
Check it.

more seizethem.com news

DNS seems to be propagating, at least as far as Verizon's network is concerned. Some of you may still not be able to get to seizethem.com but it IS up, so be patient. The 6.3.06 show is still up for download and if I interpret the traffic counter correctly it appears nearly 20 people have downloaded the show to date.

Also, there is now a Seize Them! email listserve, which you can sign up for here. There probably won't be much, if any, traffic for a good long time but, y'know... there it is. Enjoy.

Seize Them!

Some news.

First, there is now a real, working seizethem.com.
Secondly, a link on that page will allow you to download a .mp3 version of Seize Them!'s performance from the 6.3.06 houseparty. FLAC version to follow shortly.

That is all.

P.S. Please be patient with seizethem.com being a little flaky over the next few days.

THE STICKENING

PS Print has come through admirably, and the ISOTA QXZ stickers have arrived! The stickening begins forthwith.

musics

If any of you millions of faithful readers are looking for some live music events in New York City for this weekend, note these:

Tonight at The Delancey on the Lower East Side, my friend's band North is playing and I dig them.

Saturday night at The Bowery Ballroom is a triple threat, costume-tastic show featuring Peelander-Z, Bling Kong, and the second-to-final-ever show for good ol' Mr. Brownstone, everyone's favorite Guns N' Roses tribute. Their set will be introduced by a short video I put together for the band, so don't be late.

Here's a picture of Peelander-Z from Bonnaroo 2004 -


I'm going to try my damnedest to get at least a listenable CD of Seize Them!'s performance from last weekend burned to give to some people over the next couple of days. Just gotta keep that kick drum from peaking.

and on 'til the break of dawn

The party was a "smashing success" as they say in the martini-swilling monocle-wearing circles.

Friday night was a bit of a nightmare... torrential rains shut down all the subway trains which could take me from work, in Manhattan, to home in Astoria and cabs were impossible to hail so it was a walk over the Queensboro bridge for the first time since the transit strike last December. Then upon arriving home I discovered the worst instance of basement flooding (the third flood in five days) yet which added a whole 'nother disgusting layer of preparation to handle before the party.

But by Saturday evening all was in place (minus any hot water in the house, which was unfortunate for residents and houseguests alike) and the guests were rolling in from as far afield as California, Detroit and Boston.



DJ Porkcube set up and spun an incredibly awesome mix of Brazilian tunes, hip hop, soul, dub and various other flavors for about 2.5 hours. I was gifted with a pair of source CDs of the set and plan to enjoy it frequently. DJ Porkcube's actual mix can be found in .mp3 form here and I highly recommend downloading it.

The Disgraceland Family Freakshow contingent set up in the upstairs apartment and wowed the crowd. Magic tricks, hanging weights from various piercings, bed-of-nails tricks, swallowing balloons and then requesting that the crowd staple tips into the performers with larger denominations granting access to a wider variety of target areas. I, personally, didn't get to witness the action due to crowd size but the oohs and aahs and AAAAGGGH!s were audible all over the house.

And finally we in Seize Them! performed our second ever rock show. Once every 2.5 years is not a great record but we'll see what we can do about that. Our set started at 1:18 AM so thanks to the neighbors for not calling the cops and thanks to the party guests who stuck around through the whole thing and beyond. I'll probably have live tracks posted to the ol' enterwebnets as soon as I run them through Logic to even out some uneven things in the recording.

Dave has posted his pictures of the event here.

---

I've been notified that the ISOTA stickers have been printed and are on their way to me.

listening pleasure

First, an update on the stickers. I've contracted with the fine folks at PsPrint and they're doing a four-color print on vinyl stickers for almost $100 less than the StickerGuy folks were going to charge for a three-color stencil. PsPrint seems like a really pro outfit, or at least their website has suckered me into thinking that. Stickers should arrive several days prior to my Grand International Tour so all seems well.

Last night I spent out on the town with the fine folks from Boss Tweed, first for their show at Desmond's Tavern in Manhattan (surprisingly tasty cheeseburger and fries to be had there, by the way) and then down at the Mercury Lounge for a great show by The Dansettes. The Dansettes are a 7-piece Stax/Atlantic-style soul outfit featuring three ladies singing. Highly recommended if you're in the mood for a neo-sixties groove.



Speaking of Boss Tweed, it looks like we may be closer to choosing a song of theirs for the music-video makings. Watch this space.
Also, if you're in NYC and you like the musical stylings of Patsy Cline, you can check out the Boss Tweed side project known as "Carolyn Sills And The Poor Man's Roses". They'll be playing at Bubby's in DUMBO, Brooklyn, on Thursday, June 8th at 9PM.

flip back, turn, and try again

Well, hubris has gotten me once again. My assertion in the previous post that the sticker printing was going ahead turns out to be false. I was just on the phone with Dave at Sticker Guy and he informed me that they only screenprint... so my design is far too complicated to render properly. That they only do screenprinting is not, so far as I have found, explicitly stated on the website but I suppose it should have been a clue when I chose the "four color" option and was presented with a list of colors to pick from rather than the standard CMYK. Ah well. Time to look for a new printer. If anyone has any leads on cheapish four color vinyl sticker printing I would be happy to hear about them.

My old schoolmate Declan appears to be just about finished with his feature film Urban Assault.

The EPK trailer there is pretty exciting (though warning to those in need of warning: graphic gun violence and bare breasts). Good luck, Declan!

mix the inks

The order has been sent. The printer has his mission.


Quantity: 1000

cartography

A photo of Lincoln Park (and no definitely not Linkin Park... them I throw paper airplanes at) that I took from my hotel room window has been included in the Schmap Chicago Guide.



Schmap appears to be a "Web 2.0" style deal that provides somewhat interactive and no-doubt advertising-heavy maps of major cities. One of their people found my picture on flickr and requested use of it so I gave the go ahead. Weird stuff.

glass house

On Thursday night a friend of mine invited me out to see You Aren't My Mother play at The Glass House Gallery in Williamsburg. The Glass House Gallery is a pretty awesome ever-changing collage sculpture that you can walk around in which also hosts music and "art jams".

You Aren't My Mother sound a bit like Godspeed You Black Emperor! but with lyrics and without percussion (yet). I liked them quite a bit. I hate to simply sum them up like that because it seems dismissive and lazy, but there we are.

Prior to YAMM's set a couple of noise acts performed. First up was Harm Stryker (warning: myspace) who played for about ten to fifteen minutes. Two people twiddling with various pieces of electronic equipment feeding back into each other without discernable rhythm or melody. It was interesting but I just never get much of anything out of the experimental noise stuff. Dead Girls were up next. They were another duo, this time with one guy on a drums and another guy on noise equipment. Dead Girls' set held my interest more than Harm Stryker but was similarly chaotic. The drumming added elements that were sorta free jazzish and the phrase that popped into my head while they were playing was "it sounds like the end of the world".

I feel like an old man during noise band performances sometimes.

Supposedly next week's Seize Them! practice will feature our brand new bassist, a guy that René dug up. I'm excited. We have four weekends to teach him our songs before The Big Party in June. Also, it looks like we have a third new song with two more from Jeff coming down the road. After the new guy gets broken in I'll be back to recording The Album in earnest.

spring

I think I've found my favorite spot in Astoria Park. Sunday featured weather just about as close as possible to perfect and I sat out there for a few hours reading and listening to music.

come on people now

There are some interesting things happening.

I'm very excited by the recent surge in the Immigrant Rights movement (so called). This is a massive polity and, though it's probably insulting to consider all the participants as a monolith, I can only hope the energy gathers and results in a radical political shift for the whole country. Already there are frightening racist noises coming out of the Right, at least if Bill O'Reilly can be taken as exemplary, about how supporters of Immigrant Rights, "the real racists who want a color-based country", are seeking to destroy "what they call the white privileged Christian nation". Xenophobia is tapped for CRAZY mana.

Those of you not local to New York City might be unaware of this, but there's a growing push to give a vote in city elections to documented non-citizens who have been residents for at least six months. I fully support this. The borough of Queens, where I live, has one of the largest immigrant populations in the entire United States and they've come from all over the world. Africa, Asia, The Caribbean, Central and South America, India, The Middle East, Europe and elsewhere. Local elections can have more impact on a given person's quality of life than any other, state or federal, and New York City is quite possibly unique among US cities in the sheer amount of resources available to the city government. In our supposedly globalizing society, isn't citizenship more meaningfully defined by participation in a society rather than an accidental intersection of birth and cartography? Anyone who works and creates and hurts and struggles and cries and shouts with joy and falls into bed at night in New York City is a New Yorker, and can you think of anyone better to run the place?

France stands as an example again of a culture that has some actual political life to it, as massive nationwide demonstrations against the CPE have resulted in at least nominal concessions from the government. I see paralells to the Transit Worker's Union strike down here last December. From the point of view of those unconcerned with the condition of the laboring classes both actions can appear to be excessive noise from people in an already relatively privileged position. On face value the CPE is creating jobs for "youth" in France, so how could that be bad? The devilish compromise, of course, was to make effectively second-class citizens out of young laborers as an incentive for businesses to hire them. And if they become such, doesn't that become incentive to unload an older, expensive labor force in favor of a cheaper, more pliable one? Why shouldn't young workers enjoy the same rights that have been won for their elders? Much as with the TWU strike, the necessity lies in retaining the few rights and protections remaining after decades of successful worldwide assault by capital. It has been remarked that it's sad to see such public political energy exerted merely to retain the status quo.

China is rumbling around a bit as well. China, much like the US, has a huge migrant labor pool (though the Chinese have enough dirt poor people within their own borders that they don't need to import any) working for pittance wages and living in squalid group housing in order to improve the lot of their family back home. As in the US, massive sectors of the economy rely on a flood of cheap laborers with no political rights. These people are not stupid. They have lived their entire lives under a government that preaches a flavor of Communism and the worth of The People, and the government's economic shift to State Capitalism after 1989 was radical enough to have caused, by now, cognitive dissonance in even the most undereducated field hand. There are tens of thousands of incidents every year in rural China featuring the people facing off against the government as economic disparities increase. If history teaches anyone anything it is that you ignore the the Chinese peasantry at your peril.



If only there were some kind of technology that allowed all these groups of people to communicate and possibly organize to further common goals! Speaking of which I was thinking again about Yahoo and Google and Cisco and Microsoft and their recent activities aiding and abetting repression in China (and, as an aside, AT&T facilitating the NSA-related technical difficulties we are experiencing) and I think my attitude is now this: these companies are the epitome of a technocratic culture and, as such, made the decsion one would expect of a self-aggrandizing technocracy. What else did we really expect? After all Colombian Coca-Cola employees have a habit of turning up dead after agitating for improved conditions, so it's not like the tech companies are doing anything unique to their industry.

On the plus side? GENERALS ARE ALL "U=pwn3d, L@M3R" TO RUMSFELD. Right the hell on.

---

On the recommendation of a certain ninja (definitely NOT the kind that would be captured by ATF agents on the UGA campus) I picked up J Dilla's record "Donuts" and Madlib's Beat Konducta disc. Both are excellent. I have just now heard, on the Jaylib track "Strip Club", the use of a Jaco Pastorius sample that I've always wanted to do something with.

your name here and there and up there too

Graffiti Research Lab keeps on with the innovation and instruction with their LED Throwies and the extension thereof, the Night Writer project.

These folks are awesome and I hope I see more of their work around town.

kaboom

I would direct all of you to Joshua Ellis' article/essay Dark Miracle recounting his trip to the Trinity site where the first atomic weapon was tested. It's a nice piece of writing and I pat myself on the back for donating some dollars to this exercise in netizen-funded journalism.

The success or failure of this particular model of independent media is as-yet undetermined, but experimentation is important so I encourage you to check it out.

west

The West Wing is coming to a close. I've usually enjoyed watching it, though I mostly lost interest after Aaron Sorkin left. This season grabbed my attention again what with it being (I believe) the last season, and also Election Time in both the paralell universe of the Bartlett Administration and that of our real world counterpart. A segment of America has been escaping into the idealized presidency of Jed Bartlett for many years now and it's not difficult to understand why.

Some, I suppose, might find it odd that America's beloved shadow President is, in his fictional-television world, far more 'reality based' than his consensus-reality counterpart is revealed to be on our reality-tv news.

Character arcs are resolving themselves in a satisfying manner, and so far I believe will be impressed by the handling of John Spencer's death. I also believe I will be rather bugged out by the incorporation of footage shot at the actor's actual funeral intended to be read as scenes from that of Leo McGarry.

And though it's difficult to write in a manner that doesn't clank occasionally, I appreciate their efforts in these final episodes to blaze through a summary education in how media is employed by government. The thorough argument-by-example of why massive voter turnout is vital in the '06 election is a welcome stab at public service. Finally, and most importantly, JOSH AND DONNA FINALLY DID IT OMG. Seriously.

---

The past weekend was spent experiencing bachelor entertainment in Las Vegas on behalf of my good friend Ethan Beigel. I would be curious to know on what he is credited as "Eithan Beigel" because, let me tell you, the man is not Irish. And not even fake Irish.

I would most likely choose not to stay at the Palmswarning: flash again. The rooms are fine and I'm told that the new tower is a very nice night's lodging indeed. But it's juuuust a little too far off the Strip for it to be reachable other than by taxi, and it is (for better or worse) the definitive MTV hotel/casino.

hardly knew ye

Unfortunately, it appears the webcomic A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible has come to an end a mere two weeks after I first discovered it. The upside, I suppose, is that you can read the entirety of the back catalog in less than an hour.

Hopefully we'll see more out of those guys.

UPDATE: HA HA I've been fooled. April fooled. The comic is not over. Silly me.