Mort's wife had bought them a matching set of electronic toothbrushes in a last ditch effort to save the marriage, as if a mutual dedication to dental hygiene could stave off the inevitable. Mort suspected such vicissitudes were empty gestures at best, so he was unsurprised, if still mildly deflated, when that experiment lasted all of a week before she got bored of it and the situation went the way it was always going to go. She left him for a man with a sailboat, who she claimed still possessed "the Spark of life," a man who had been through three marriages in the last ten years and sailed because it was the only relationship he cared to work for. Mort and his wife had been married forty-seven years the day she walked out on him. In her wake she left a cluttered collection of halves. Half a tea set, half a tray of silverware, half a box of Grape-Nuts. It was just as well.
The electronic toothbrush activated with a push of a button, and every thirty seconds would interrupt its droning hum with a deadened "blip" to signal to the user that it was time to brush a different quadrant of the mouth. It did this four times until a dentist-recommended two minute period had been reached, at which point it shut off automatically. Mort had followed the unfamiliar regiment without question, his eyes opening in mock wonder the first time he had tried it in front of her, as if to say that she had revolutionized their drab nightly routine. He had played his part, he thought, rather convincingly.
But now, in the dingy light of another night alone, he had had enough. He was through with the toothbrush and its dubious claims of better brushing. His back ached from standing in front of the mirror for so long, listening to that ceaseless hum as it reverberated through his creaky skull, waiting for the blips and the echoing silence that would finally come, but only ever at the toothbrush's whim. All his life he had brushed his teeth without mechanical assistance, and for far less than two minutes. His teeth had been just fine for sixty-nine years, or close enough to fine, so who was this new toothbrush to tell him how long he had to brush for?
And so, one night, after the toothbrush had been running for an ample forty-two seconds, he clicked it off, spat, and rinsed. He placed the toothbrush down by the sink where it stood, quiet and docile. He looked in the mirror at the pasty and liver-spotted figure staring back and smiled at him. He thought he detected a new vibrancy in that face, a new depth of color, but then again, it may have been the new lightbulb he had installed above the sink that morning. Mort clicked off the light and went to bed where he slept, as he always had, on the left side, closest to the door. His head sank into the pillow, his hands clasped one another over his chest. He drifted off and dreamt of a meadow he had played in as a boy, where the buzz of cicadas during the summer played a constant accompaniment to his made-up games of fancy, and their song did not leave his head until morning.
Monday, November 08, 2010
Friday, November 05, 2010
Blinding
I meant to post these earlier, but haven't gotten around to it until now.
Florence + the Machine at Terminal 5. This woman is fantastic live (and through a set of speakers or headphones, for that matter).
(One of these days, I'll get around to bringing a DSLR around again so I can stop posting grainy phone pictures.)
Harp!
Florence + the Machine at Terminal 5. This woman is fantastic live (and through a set of speakers or headphones, for that matter).
(One of these days, I'll get around to bringing a DSLR around again so I can stop posting grainy phone pictures.)
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
One Way To See It
Like the fever dream of a random twentysomething plucked from the streets of Silver Lake. Still, an interesting take on the original.
"Exiled State of Mind" by The Robotanists.
"Exiled State of Mind" by The Robotanists.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Southern Hospitality
Roy and I were in Austin this past weekend. Our friend Mike, who has JetBlue's All-You-Can-Jet pass this month, has been flying all over the country and was headed there as well to meet up our friend Ed, who's stationed at Fort Hood about an hour outside the city.
Some of you may already know this, but Roy and I were born in Texas, in a (what I imagine to be) sleepy town called Bedford just outside of Dallas. Our family moved to Southern California when we were 7 months old, though, so we never got the opportunity to get properly acquainted with our birth state. Still, though it may very well be illusory, I've always felt a tie to the state of Texas, what with its softly-hued dusks, wide flowing plains, and smokey scents of home. Of course, it's also entirely possible that whatever sentimental feelings I have toward this hypothetically mythical land may have arisen purely out of my love for "Friday Night Lights" and my blanket affection for a nonspecific idea of the South, itself a misguided conflation of what should be many unique cultures and qualities. Regardless, I gots a thing for Texas and, aside from two previous trips when I passed through Amarillo on my way to somewhere else, this was my first foray into the state since I had left it over 23 years ago.
One of the first things I saw after getting off the plane was a woman wearing a tie-dye T-shirt emblazoned with the logo "Keep Austin Weird." The city managed to live up to the claim, although not in an over-the-top way. Austin is weird, but only because it's filled with so many different kinds of people, places, and ideas. In the middle of the city lies the University of Texas at Austin, which fulfills both your Southern university stereotypes and your more generic partying-college-kids stereotype. Travel a few blocks southward and you'll hit Downtown Austin, which squeezes towering skyscrapers belonging to various financial institutions right next to 6th street, a lively but unassuming stretch of bars, restaurants, and music venues. Sprinkled in are places like the Museum of the Weird and the purportedly haunted Driskill Hotel. On the weekends, the police close off the adjoining streets to traffic to allow revelers to walk down the street unfettered. Head south of the Colorado River and you'll come to South Congress (affectionately abbreviated to SoCo by some), a shopping district with an abundance of food carts selling everything from Tex-Mex to bratwursts. Need a pair of boots and a cowboy hat? You can find those here. Austin has all the traditional makings of a middle tier-sized city, but its charm is all its own.
Roy, Mike, and I arrived in the city first and headed to our hotel to wait for Ed to drive down from Killeen. The lock on our bathroom door was broken, which is only relevant because I was on the can when Ed arrived, and the broken lock meant Ed was able to walk right in and hand me a 32 oz.-er. This is one of many reasons why I love Ed. After a belt-busting dinner of barbeque, we hit up 6th street and were very happy to discover how cheap the drinks were. Much was imbibed, some naps at the bar were taken, and debauchery followed. The only lowlight of the evening was a smoke-choked bar we hit up at the end of the night that did funny things to my appetite for the rest of the weekend. Our second day found us catching brunch in SoCo and sneaking in a little bit of window shopping at Allen's Boots. College football, a second barbeque dinner, and a low-key evening out rounded out our Saturday. Sunday was alternately rainy and sunny. We got some fantastic Tex-Mex from Torchy's Tacos and visited UT Austin, which is also where my parents met some thirty years ago. I e-mailed a picture of us standing on their campus to them and I got e-mails back with more exclamation points than I ever suspected my parents capable of wrangling. We spent the evening sharing one last bar crawl with Ed, as he had to head back to base in time for work the next morning. He deploys to Iraq next month.
Austin was good to us. The only thing I missed doing was catching a movie at the historic Alamo Drafthouse, but that's okay because I now have a reason to come back. It's interesting, only knowing a place as an idea for so long and then finally seeing it in the flesh. Admittedly, Austin probably isn't the best representation of Texas, but it's a damn fine city nonetheless. Next stop -- Dallas, or maybe some booney-ass town in the middle of nowhere. I'm game. May my Texas dalliances continue.
Skyline.
Capitol building in the rain.
Hiding out from the rain under a tree.
Hiding out again.
Darrell K. Royal Texas Memorial Stadium, where the Longhorns play.
Roy's shirt becomes unintentionally ironic here.
Country-Folk band!
Of course Ed finds the one thing relating to California in the entire state.
Rainy day on 6th street.
On the move.
Some of you may already know this, but Roy and I were born in Texas, in a (what I imagine to be) sleepy town called Bedford just outside of Dallas. Our family moved to Southern California when we were 7 months old, though, so we never got the opportunity to get properly acquainted with our birth state. Still, though it may very well be illusory, I've always felt a tie to the state of Texas, what with its softly-hued dusks, wide flowing plains, and smokey scents of home. Of course, it's also entirely possible that whatever sentimental feelings I have toward this hypothetically mythical land may have arisen purely out of my love for "Friday Night Lights" and my blanket affection for a nonspecific idea of the South, itself a misguided conflation of what should be many unique cultures and qualities. Regardless, I gots a thing for Texas and, aside from two previous trips when I passed through Amarillo on my way to somewhere else, this was my first foray into the state since I had left it over 23 years ago.
One of the first things I saw after getting off the plane was a woman wearing a tie-dye T-shirt emblazoned with the logo "Keep Austin Weird." The city managed to live up to the claim, although not in an over-the-top way. Austin is weird, but only because it's filled with so many different kinds of people, places, and ideas. In the middle of the city lies the University of Texas at Austin, which fulfills both your Southern university stereotypes and your more generic partying-college-kids stereotype. Travel a few blocks southward and you'll hit Downtown Austin, which squeezes towering skyscrapers belonging to various financial institutions right next to 6th street, a lively but unassuming stretch of bars, restaurants, and music venues. Sprinkled in are places like the Museum of the Weird and the purportedly haunted Driskill Hotel. On the weekends, the police close off the adjoining streets to traffic to allow revelers to walk down the street unfettered. Head south of the Colorado River and you'll come to South Congress (affectionately abbreviated to SoCo by some), a shopping district with an abundance of food carts selling everything from Tex-Mex to bratwursts. Need a pair of boots and a cowboy hat? You can find those here. Austin has all the traditional makings of a middle tier-sized city, but its charm is all its own.
Roy, Mike, and I arrived in the city first and headed to our hotel to wait for Ed to drive down from Killeen. The lock on our bathroom door was broken, which is only relevant because I was on the can when Ed arrived, and the broken lock meant Ed was able to walk right in and hand me a 32 oz.-er. This is one of many reasons why I love Ed. After a belt-busting dinner of barbeque, we hit up 6th street and were very happy to discover how cheap the drinks were. Much was imbibed, some naps at the bar were taken, and debauchery followed. The only lowlight of the evening was a smoke-choked bar we hit up at the end of the night that did funny things to my appetite for the rest of the weekend. Our second day found us catching brunch in SoCo and sneaking in a little bit of window shopping at Allen's Boots. College football, a second barbeque dinner, and a low-key evening out rounded out our Saturday. Sunday was alternately rainy and sunny. We got some fantastic Tex-Mex from Torchy's Tacos and visited UT Austin, which is also where my parents met some thirty years ago. I e-mailed a picture of us standing on their campus to them and I got e-mails back with more exclamation points than I ever suspected my parents capable of wrangling. We spent the evening sharing one last bar crawl with Ed, as he had to head back to base in time for work the next morning. He deploys to Iraq next month.
Austin was good to us. The only thing I missed doing was catching a movie at the historic Alamo Drafthouse, but that's okay because I now have a reason to come back. It's interesting, only knowing a place as an idea for so long and then finally seeing it in the flesh. Admittedly, Austin probably isn't the best representation of Texas, but it's a damn fine city nonetheless. Next stop -- Dallas, or maybe some booney-ass town in the middle of nowhere. I'm game. May my Texas dalliances continue.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Taking the Stage
Late last month, Possible Productions had the opportunity to work on some of the video content for Jay-Z's set during his landmark "Home & Home" four-show tour with Eminem. They played two dates in Detroit's Comerica Park and two dates in New York's Yankee Stadium. Figge and Alex, after working their asses off in New York and Detroit, sat out the Yankee Stadium leg of the tour to go back home to L.A. so they could focus on the video content for Deadmau5's VMA set (which looked fucking fantastic. See some of it here). Possible Production's two All-Access passes thus transferred to me and Roy, so on Monday and Tuesday, it was off to the Bronx with us.
The show, to put it mildly, was amazing. Much of my love for hip-hop has waned in recent years, but Em and Jay are two of the biggest reasons I fell in love with rap in the first place. They also happen to be two of the biggest (with Jay being arguably the biggest ever, no?) hip-hop icons working today. I was excited, but 2002 me would've lost his freaking mind over going to a show like this. 2010 me played it much cooler. Either that or I'm just a lot more jaded now. Probably the latter.
My concert-going phase, which only bloomed in the last few years, never really overlapped with my hip-hop phase, so this is one of the first hip-hop concerts I've attended. I'm familiar with the kind of energy rock shows and music festivals can generate, but I was curious to see if rappers could create that same kind of buzz without the help of soaring melodies or epic solos. Eminem's relentless vitriol, occasional goofiness, and overall sincerity (not to mention a catalogue of hits) helped him command the stage. He put on a good show. But you haven't seen stage presence until you've seen Jay-Z live. That man commands 40,000 strong on swagger alone. Throw that in with his increased touring activity over the last few years, and you have somebody who has mastered how to put on a good show. He knows exactly what his strengths are and when to hit the crowd with something to really stir them up. And nobody in this business seems to have friends like Jay has friends. A slew of guest appearances ensured the night stayed interesting as the concert ran past midnight into hour four.
Awesome show aside, what really put the night over the top for me was just seeing our company's work up on the screen. There were definitely several moments when I found myself looking around the stands of Yankee stadium, packed to the seam with screaming fans, then looked to the stage only to see something I helped make, right there on the screen (though most of the credit goes to Figge and Casey McClain, an animator we hired for the gig), and wondered "How the hell did I get here?" Anyway, making some money and getting the company's name out there on cool shit like this is definitely an unbelievable experience, but here's to hoping it's just the first step towards a future of doing our own projects, our own way. On to the next one!
Now for some pictures (taken on my phone, so forgive the general crappiness):
The view from left field.
Look! Team USA in the crowd! Handy-dandily labeled for easy recognition!
Em and 50.
Oh yeah. He brought out the fucking Doctor. That's him on the bottom left.
Hova!
You knew he had to do a Biggie tribute. That's Possible Productions' work, by the way.
Chris Martin on the left, Jay with the hands up.
On day two, instead of Chris, he brought out the queen Mary J. Blige!
She ripped a quick solo set.
Blurry picture of Jay and the boy Drake.
And then he brought out Beyonce!
Not the best picture of her, but the clearest one I have.
More Possible Productions on the screen! This one Roy and I actually shot.
Same with this one. Marcy!
Aaaand even more Possible.
I grabbed some video of various songs throughout the concert, but I don't have a way to process the footage right now. Assuming I don't succumb to general laziness, I'll post those later.
The show, to put it mildly, was amazing. Much of my love for hip-hop has waned in recent years, but Em and Jay are two of the biggest reasons I fell in love with rap in the first place. They also happen to be two of the biggest (with Jay being arguably the biggest ever, no?) hip-hop icons working today. I was excited, but 2002 me would've lost his freaking mind over going to a show like this. 2010 me played it much cooler. Either that or I'm just a lot more jaded now. Probably the latter.
My concert-going phase, which only bloomed in the last few years, never really overlapped with my hip-hop phase, so this is one of the first hip-hop concerts I've attended. I'm familiar with the kind of energy rock shows and music festivals can generate, but I was curious to see if rappers could create that same kind of buzz without the help of soaring melodies or epic solos. Eminem's relentless vitriol, occasional goofiness, and overall sincerity (not to mention a catalogue of hits) helped him command the stage. He put on a good show. But you haven't seen stage presence until you've seen Jay-Z live. That man commands 40,000 strong on swagger alone. Throw that in with his increased touring activity over the last few years, and you have somebody who has mastered how to put on a good show. He knows exactly what his strengths are and when to hit the crowd with something to really stir them up. And nobody in this business seems to have friends like Jay has friends. A slew of guest appearances ensured the night stayed interesting as the concert ran past midnight into hour four.
Awesome show aside, what really put the night over the top for me was just seeing our company's work up on the screen. There were definitely several moments when I found myself looking around the stands of Yankee stadium, packed to the seam with screaming fans, then looked to the stage only to see something I helped make, right there on the screen (though most of the credit goes to Figge and Casey McClain, an animator we hired for the gig), and wondered "How the hell did I get here?" Anyway, making some money and getting the company's name out there on cool shit like this is definitely an unbelievable experience, but here's to hoping it's just the first step towards a future of doing our own projects, our own way. On to the next one!
Now for some pictures (taken on my phone, so forgive the general crappiness):
I grabbed some video of various songs throughout the concert, but I don't have a way to process the footage right now. Assuming I don't succumb to general laziness, I'll post those later.
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