Category: Addicted To

When I think of all of the senseless violence committed against children of all ages, and when I think of my own two daughters ages four and six, I can’t help from hurting when I hear the Capital Children’s Choir sing. While there is great sadness inside of me as they cover these songs, there is also a deep sense of pride and joy that something so simple as making sounds with your throat can sound so angelic.

Here are just a few of their many extraordinary covers. I do recommend sticking with each song all the way through, as they go through many movements of varying intensity and splendor.

Albert Exergian started an amazing series of posters celebrating various television shows. He uses the tried and true Swiss style to iconography a show down to its barest symbol. Most of them are awesome, and some of them are genius. Here are a select few. And you can check out his blog here, where he’s been collecting them as they’re finished…

Exergian’s Blog.

Sometimes a picture is worth more than a thousand words. Sometimes they are worth a thousand laughs. I have burned well over 50 calories today on this site. So transcendent. So classic. So timeless.

SO ADDICTIVE!

AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com

My wife’s mother is a first grade school teacher and she’s teaching her students about grouping names for animals. There are the obvious ones (flock of birds, swarm of locust, herd of buffalo), and then there are the mildly obscure and usually casual dinner trivia ones (gaggle of geese, rabble of butterflies).

But nobody ever told me how absurd and obscure some of these grouping names truly are. It’s fascinating, really. Where this becomes most engaging is when the animal is fairly common, yet we never knew the name of their grouping. Take frogs for example. What is the name for a group of frogs? I bet you weren’t thinking “a bundle”, but that’s exactly what it is. WHAT!? Or what about an odor of skunk?

Some other choice groupings: a bask of Alligator, a shrewdness of ape, a coalition of cheetah, and a cell of eel. But don’t let my preferences sway you, go see for yourself!

*A final footnote. For those of you tossing around the gaggle of geese term at a dinner party. You can be the star of the show when you tell them “actually a gaggle of geese in flight are referred to as a skein, not a gaggle at all.”

View More Animal Groupings.

Made of business cards, retail flyers, packaging and other “nice papers”, Sharon’s pass time has become my obsession. I love reading about how she builds these tiny buildings. The passion in her descriptions carry into the works themselves.

The three houses made from the Kido cards is special to me, as it was one of the first baby stores I looked at in NYC, before we had our first baby, Grace, whom you may have noticed popping up on my blog from time to time.

View the Buildings.

Early in 2006, a Frenchman by the name of Mathiew Saura (aka Vincent Moon) hit the streets of Paris with The Spinto Band and recorded a mini-documentary performance in an apartment and a restaurant. He called these glimpses into the psyche of bands Take Away Shows (Les Concerts à Emporter), and since that evening he has gone on to film over 100 more Take Away Shows, and has been involved with several feature-length documentaries, one of them centered around the band Beirut, entitled Cheap Magic Inside.

What is so great about these shows is that you get a different look at musicians you love, as well as exposure to new bands you may never have heard of. Most of these shows are set in Paris, France (though other directors have gotten involved around the world), and use ingenius ways of presenting the songs to us. Whether we’re following Andrew Bird down the street as he whistles and sings amidst passerby, or listening to St. Vincent confess her intimate thoughts in a lush crimson bedroom, the connection is always there.

One of my favorite shows is Yeasayer’s voyage through the underbelly of Paris’ subways, singing acapella until they arrive in a 5th floor flat and find an old piano along with several willing listeners. I also enjoyed following Zach Condon down the streets with his ukelale, until he surprises us all by wandering into a restaurant where the rest of his band awaits to continue his song in epic fashion. Arcade Fire has an awesome setting in the bowels of some old building, with a megaphone and hundreds of fans crowded around them like a swarm of ants.

View the Shows.

Here are a few noteworthy shows, but please check out all of them.

Watch on Dailymotion

Andrew Bird

Watch on Dailymotion

Arcade Fire

Watch on Dailymotion

Yeasayer

Watch on Dailymotion

Beirut

For the unfortunate readers who have never watched Fraggle Rock, it was a television series created by Jim Henson featuring his signature muppet designs. It ran for four seasons (96 episodes) in the US, on HBO. It was on-air from 1983 to 1987. It featured Fraggles, Gorgs, Doozers, and Silly Creatures (humans), and was created with the grand hopes of bringing peace to the world (seriously).

For the rest of you out there, wasn’t this show AMAZING?

So many things I can talk about here. How the Fraggles’ main food source are the buildings made by the Doozers (out of radish dust). Or how the main character’s uncle (Traveling Matt) is always out exploring “Outer Space” (the human world).

Gobo, Wembley, Boober, Mokey and Red are the five main characters of the show, and if you can find a funnier puppet than Boober in any television show, I’d love to hear about it. His lines are just too much “That sure was a spirited mosey!” and “I pride myself on my inability to guffaw.” are just two examples.

Then there’s the Gorgs. Ma and Pa Gorg (queen and king of the universe, respectively), and their goofy son Junior Gorg, who’s main hobby is trying to catch Fraggles. “Look ma! I caught a Fwaggle!”

Or what about Marjory the all knowing trash heap, and her two rat sidekicks Philo and Gunge? She is the oracle of the show, and often provides a handy little moral for the Fraggles (and us) to follow.

I could tell you about the real human, inventor Doc Crystal, and his (puppet) dog Sprocket. How in each episode Doc gets a postcard from Traveling Matt addressed to Gobo Fraggle and throws it in the trash, only to be retrieved and read by Gobo to the rest of the Fraggles.

I could go on and on (and on), but I think the best idea would be for you to buy or rent the first season on DVD and (re)discover it for yourself.

This is probably one of the most imaginative children’s series ever put on the screen, thanks in large part to HBO’s willingness to let Jim Henson and his team just go for it.

Ladies & Gentlemen, I do believe it’s time for you to head down to Fraggle Rock.

Learn More.

Buy the DVD.

Disclaimer: Fraggles DO like to sing and dance, but fortunately the 80’s vernacular makes the songs forgivable.

With about a dozen authors posting full length albums every day, this is probably one of the most amazing blogs around. If you like music. The premise is simple: these guys post an album to “try”, they accompany this with a link to buy it, and then they post an excerpt of a review from some other site (varies from album to album).

They have been posting three or four albums a day for over two years now. I counted about 1,400 albums on there, but likely more than that. I love the fact that I’ve only heard of about 5% of these artists, and the genius move to include professional reviews really gives you a feel for the album before blindly downloading (most of these are rapidshare links, and unless you pay for a premium account, you are kind of limited to one album an hour).

I can’t stop perusing these gems, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy this as well.

view bolachas grátis.

Google is hosting a rare collection of mostly unpublished photos online from the Time LIFE vaults. They are intended for personal and research use only, but the sheer scope of the project is mind-blowing. This is apparently the largest photo scanning project in history. If what I’ve read is true, what you are about to witness is 10 million photographs, found in loose envelopes and tucked away in the vaults, by some of the most preeminent photojournalists of all time (Gjon Mili, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Margaret Bourke-White, Ansel Adams).

The second most amazing thing about this project are the images themselves. (a quick tip, you can also add source:life to any normal Google image search to call on this inventory of images). With that in mind, I set out to find a nice assortment of images. These are obviously just the tip of the iceberg, but you can see what I’m getting at. It’s just, quite simply, inspiring.

I searched for “Directors at Work” and got a shot of Stanley Kubrick on the set of 2001 along with Jerome Robbins on the set of West Side Story. I searched for “Reflections” and found a shot of Neil Armstrong on the moon with the flag reflected in his visor next to a shot of Charlie Chaplin looking in the mirror in his dressing room. The scenarios go on and on, now get over there and try it for yourself!

View the LIFE Archive.

To understand my addiction to Mark Kozelek, we have to go back to art college, 1998 Minneapolis, when I was in a terrible relationship with the wrong girl…

I had just met a fellow student (and the woman who would become my wife), who took me in and let me stay in her studio apartment. Her old roommate had left in a huff, with all of her cats, and it was just us. Life went from deplorable to perfect in a matter of days, and there we were, alone and happy.

When we finally moved from that studio apartment, out to Silver Lake, Los Angeles, we accidentally took a box that my wife’s old roommate had left behind. It wouldn’t be for another nine months before I looked in that box and found an old Canon 35mm still camera…and a series of CD’s with beautifully sparse photographs on the covers. I was intrigued, but for some reason I put them all back inside that box.

It wouldn’t be for another two-and-a-half years, however, before I ever put those CD’s in the player. In between that time, I had left a dot com start-up in LA, tried my hand at owning my own company in San Francisco (and failing), and moved back to Chicago to work for a motion graphics company. We were low on cash, and living with my wife’s parents, when I decided to open that box again.

Red House Painters – Mp3

I remember the day clearly; I was laying in bed, reading Danielewski’s debut novel, “House of Leaves,” and put all five of the CDs into my multi-disc changer. I hit shuffle (I never hit shuffle), and the songs began to play. And I fell in love. Night after night, I just left it on shuffle. The songs bled from one album to the next, indiscernibly so, and for weeks I would enjoy the songs each one as if it were the first time I had heard it.

So, after a long, fleeting acquaintance with Mark Kozelek (nearly four years), his songs had finally connected with me on a nearly spiritual level. The more I listened, the more eerie this connection became. Not only was the music itself the perfect depiction of who I was at the time (and still am, to a large degree) but the lyrics, once I started to listen, nearly tracked my entire life’s story.

He sang about family gatherings in the Midwest; about Silver Lake, and LA in general; about a girl who drew him pictures; about a park named after my wife’s grandmother (and now my daughter); he even wrote a song for his cat (remember my wife’s roommate?). This was me, a living narrative of excerpts from Kozelek verses. A part of me existed in his words… and now his words live inside me.

Mark Kozelek (Solo) – Mp3

Since that night in bed with my book and the songs on shuffle, I’ve followed his every move. I’ve followed the delayed release of Old Ramon; his split from 4AD; the solo records in-between; the forming of Sun Kil Moon; the importance of “Carry Me Ohio,” as one of the greatest songs ever made. I’ve seen him four times in concert, and I’ll continue to follow his work and watch his shows until he stops making music.

Sun Kil Moon – Mp3

I don’t think I need to sit here and explain the sleepy style of music Mark Kozelek makes, or the skillful guitar work, the exquisitely simple and poetic lyrics, the perfectly sparse vocal deliveries, none of it. For if you have read this far, you’ll surely feel some obligation to discover him for yourself.

p.s. The album covers here are, as far as I know, a complete catalog of all of Kozelek’s official releases (not including any compilations).

That’s right, as simple as it sounds, this simple url is mighty addictive. Simply create a bookmark to the following link (you can drag the link to your bookmarks bar in some browsers), and start the clicking . . .

Wikipedia Random

Here are three consecutive results I just got, to demonstrate how rad this can be:

Click 1: Jason Keep (Filipino Basketball Player)
Click 2: TUBB3 (A human gene)
Click 3: Surrender to the Blender (Album by the band King Prawn)

For those who aren’t aware, there’s a website where people in New York can submit things they hear in the city — in a cab, on the street, in the subway, at the office, wherever. It’s simple in principle, and highly addictive to read through.

They tend to air on the side of low-brow dirty type conversations, but if you weed through, there are many gems.

Check out Overheard in New York.

No extra words needed.
Just visit the site.

Fabien Barral has put together quite an impressive collection of inspiration at Graphic-ExchanGE. Have a perusal, if you are so inclined.

The man’s writing, in a word, smoldered. Even something as mundane as an insurance salesman selling accident insurance to a lonely wife became a thing so tense, and so dramatic, that you couldn’t tear your eyes away from the screen as the scenes unfolded.

If you’ve not watched Double Indemnity, or happened to miss Sunset Boulevard, or perhaps you’ve never heard of Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina, or Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch, then you’ve got some movies to Netflix. These films all have one thing in common, and that’s the taut, sharp writing of Billy Wilder.

Ever watch the news and feel like you’re getting nothing but spin, regardless of how objective the media tells you they are? I feel that way, and usually have to balance my CNN viewing with some FOXNEWS just to see two sides of the same issue.

Well that’s where FactCheck.org comes in handy, because it tries its hardest to demystify the BS you tend to see on a day-to-day basis from both sides of the aisle. And I’ve found it to be a great tool. Perhaps they favor the left just a LITTLE more in their choice of articles (out of the 12 articles on the homepage, for instance, 2 of them debunked Obama, while 6 of them debunked McCain, leaving 8 articles comparing both candidates at once).

In any case, if you’re dizzy from the political spin, check it out, and get a better sense of what’s going on in the political world.

This Food Network show is like the parts of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood where he would tour those factories and discover how things were really made.

Only like a thousand times better, because as a snack food junkie, I get to see where all the treats I know and love truly come from.

It helps that Marc Summers is the host (for most all episodes), since I always enjoyed Double Dare on Nickelodeon when I was a boy. A little nostalgia just helps set the mood.

If you haven’t checked this show out yet, please do. Here are a couple Youtube clips I found . . .

Candy Corn

Corn Dogs

Until this post, I’ve shown and not told. Meaning, I have always presented my posts as substantive things, rather than frivolous posts about what I did this weekend, or what I think of the economy. But I wanted to share with you a past time I have taken to ever since a fishing trip to Canada two years ago.

And that past time is writing.

I started ambitiously, conjuring up an idea for a fantasy novel where a moth colony performs a ritual in which one of them passes through “the light” every cycle, until one gets through and shatters its world into a billion fireflies, forming our stars. From there, I’ve concepted, drafted, or completed about 45 stories, some short, some flash, and some novels. Most of them are fantasy, sci-fi, or horror, though I have written a couple memoirs, and some standard fiction stories.

Below is a complete running list of the stories that have made their way out of my head, in one form or another. I share this with you as a demonstration of my addiction to writing, and my goal to become published some time in the future. All-in-all I have submitted about seven of these stories to about 20 or so publishers, all of them (so far) receiving rejections (though I have about 5 submissions in the ether at the time of this posting).

My stories thus far . . .

SYNOPSES

01. The Adventures of Bullseye Barracks (series)
02. Cabinet of Curiosities
03. Cloud People
04. The Coal Train
05. The Cowboy and His Elephant
06. Demons of Devgiri
07. Man on the Lake
09. Stalin’s Engine
10. Twin Flames
11. Before There Were Cavemen
12. Nebbish Pecksniffian (series)
13. Orphans
14. The Second Plague

PARTIAL DRAFTS

01. Birthday Wish
02. Blue Sky Curse
03. Cloud Ship’s Bow
04. Diamond Tree
05. The Dragon Ships
06. Gunnysack
07. Honeypaw
08. Kingwood
09. Owl’s Breath
10. Trouble With Badgers
11. Want and Will
12. When the Wolves Come
13. The Accidental Camper
14. Death of a Dwarf Planet
15. The Diesels Are Coming
16. The Dryland Fisher
17. Forgotten Steps
18. A Future Self
19. Landscape With Librarian
20. The Last Branch
21. Shiny White Things
22. The Silent Nightingale
23. View With a Room
24. Wharren

NOVELS IN PROGRESS

01. The Lost Lantern (62,000 words)
02. The Traffic Seas (30,000 words)
03. Sunny Ridge Lane Memoirs (5,500 words)

COMPLETED STORIES

01. Asparagus
02. Beneath His Rubber Boots
03. Crossbow
04. Secret Hiding Spot

These images speak for themselves. This site shows dozens more Faces of the Earth in this spirit, and some of them (as you can see here) are pretty awesome.

I’m sure Pixar will have something coming out soon using Faces of the Earth as the basis for their character design, much like they used Nick Park as the basis for their Cars film.

Check out the parent site, Flabbergastedly, for other photographic oddities found around the interweb. And Thanks Alex for the link to the link, wherever that may be.

What a treasure trove this website is. I almost feel naked sharing it with you like this; I want to keep it all to myself. But this 590+ page blog about “old photos and what life a hundred years ago was like,” is just too great to keep from you.

What’s even greater, is that all of the images are hi-res. Some of them are very, very high res. It seems the author of Shorpy, Dave, puts a lot of time and effort into bringing us these images, and it’s special to sift through the pages, getting lost in another time.

But don’t take my word for it. Go snoop around Shorpy for yourself, and get lost like I did.

A friend of mine recently turned me the classic game Zork, written originally in 1977. It’s a text-based interactive fiction game, something like those choose-your-own-adventure books. What’s great about this series is the writing, plain and simple. You feel like you’ve been sucked into this other world and partaking in some secret missions.

Plus, this game is hard, don’t be fooled by the lack of blood spatter. Try it for yourself, if you don’t believe me. There are three games in the series, and I’ve only scratched the surface so far.

A prefabricated home is a modular home made in part or entirely from components made beforehand in a factory. The idea and allure behind prefabricated homes, however, is multi-faceted.

First, there is the mass-production aspect, wherein certain types of prefab homes can be built off-site, and sometimes even completely so, meaning you could have a new home in under 3 months, fully built and ready to live in.

Another aspect is the green factor. It is possible to be creative with the prebuilt elements, using shipping crates, recycled woods, etc. to create a home that is eco-friendly.

Finally, from a design standpoint, prefab lives predominately in the modern arena. This is a good and a bad thing, because while I am a personal fan of the general aesthetic of prefab, many are not. What would be great would be a wider palette that more of middle-America can get into, so then we can replace all of the horrific monstrosities you see on your way out of any major metropolis as you head to Ikea to get a new filler coffee table.

There are some great resources out there about prefab homes and how to become a proud owner. Check out fabprefab, prefabs, and Prefabcosm for a start.

If you live in Chicago and haven’t had a Swirlz cupcake, shame on you. These are the best cupcakes I’ve ever eaten, and I’ve had a few (too many). The chocolate is a classic, and the vanilla is ridiculous. My wife rather likes the red velvet, and they have seasonal flavors like banana walnut, chocolate peanut butter, and malted chocolate.

And for those of you who live in the LA area, the answer is “YES!” Swirlz is definitely better than Sprinkles. Sorry guys, not on the same level. Anyone in NY have a great cupcake spot you think might rival the heavenly flavors of Swirlz?

I’ve wasted too much time scouring FAIL blog. I’m not the first to find this site, nor will I be the last, but for those who haven’t witnessed it yet, it will be a fun discovery all the same.

“I would rather watch a thousand ton dredge dig a canal than see it done by a thousand spent slaves lashed into submission. I like machines.” – Boris Artzybasheff

Here are several beautiful images from his Machinalia series, and here are some of his assorted works.

I am only on the second book in this projected seven volume fantasy epic, but I can already tell you that A Song of Ice and Fire is one of my favorites series’ of all time. Without getting into a detailed dissertation on why George R.R. Martin has reimagined the genre and brought a new way of looking at stayed archetypes, I will just say that this author knows how to create scenes. Each chapter is told from a different viewpoint of one of the central characters, and there are usually about six or seven characters we follow in each book. The format makes for sprawling, engaging storytelling, and the fantasy elements are not your typical trolls and dragons (though dragons do exist in some fashion).

HBO has actually optioned the rights to this series, and has a plan to turn each book into a single season of episodes. No news on the development yet, but plans had been made to shoot this series in New Zealand were it to go into production. It would be a very special series, and HBO would be the perfect venue for it (for there is plenty of murder, warring, sex, and betrayal to go around for everyone).

If you have avoided reading fantasy because you aren’t interested in wizards or hobbits, then this might be a series you should check out. There’s an alcoholic king, a sarcastic imp, a Tom Sawyer like young girl, and a foreign woman who isn’t too afraid of fire, to name a few.

Go check out the first book now, and buy the rest while you’re at it.

“With all this fever in my mind, I could drown in your kerosene eyes. You’re just a riddle in the sky. Oh where do my bluebirds fly?”

It’s fair to assume the songs Kristian Matsson sings on his latest LP, “Shallow Graves,” were written by a master wordsmith from 40 years past.

But you’d be wrong.

I’m no music historian, but of what little I know of the man, I can’t help but compare the songwriting to that of Bob Dylan. The music is sparse, seldom more than an acoustic guitar or a banjo. These are a set of haunted American campfire tales, sung by a Swede with a voice somewhere between Dylan and David Gray.

At the end of the day, I can’t stop playing these songs. Have a listen for yourself. Check out my favorite two tracks:

Where Do My Bluebirds Fly

The Gardner

And here’s a Youtube clip of Kristian performing “It Will Follow the Rain“

From aardwolf (an insect-eating cousin to the hyena) to zither (a stringed instrument in the same family as the harpsichord), I find this online resource fascinating. If you enjoy strange words or strange things, this is the resource for you. Some of your findings will lead you down a breadcrumb trail to several interesting dinner conversations.

Enjoy The Dictionary of Difficult Words.

I recently purchased a new laptop bag. I was worried that a leather bag might come off a little too business casual. Now that I have the bag, however, I don’t really care how it looks. It’s too slick and functional to matter. There’s a sleeve for the laptop, with a quilted micro-suede lining and a foam patted bottom for impact, both of which function great. It’s comfortable on the shoulder too. All-in-all, it’s a kick butt bag and I’m happy to own it.

Hands down the best chocolate malted milk candy with a brand name on it. They are seasonal (guess which season), and hard to find. My wife once bought me a 3 pound bulk bag straight from the factory. You have to suck on them like a gobstopper first though, so the chocolate melts and heaven erupts in your mouth.