maybe it's just me

Jerry Orbach 1935-2004

Jerry Orbach, dead at 69 from prostate cancer. Obit from the NY Times. I had no idea that the majority of his career was spent on Broadway.

Susan Sontag 1933-2004

NY Times obituary for Sontag, who died yesterday at the age of 71. Here is a link to her website.

Audioblogs

The intense lack of funds that seems to be part of the graduate school experience, even worse than those early 20s undergrad years, has had a negative effect on my music buying, it's all but cancelled it out. I've bought maybe 5 LPs since August & only one at a record store. They include: Panda Bear's solo debut (which I've misplaced somehow), the s/t Donovan record from 1977 (which stinks, sorry Drew), the Pointer Sisters 1973 debut (a clean duplicate), an unplayable copy of Charles Lloyd's Forest Flower & Rod Stewart's Never A Dull Moment (1974). I am not whining. I only want to give thanks. In addition to catching up on forgotten chestnuts in the stacks & the potent pile of our neighbors' duplicates that I got for my 30th birthday, the kind souls who operate what they're calling "audioblogs" have kept my head above water. Here are a few that I like:

Fluxblog - The grandaddy of them all.

GabbaPod Also one of the old kids on the block.

Oliver Wang's Soul Sides - Get the hot soul, jazz & funk tracks while they last.

'Buked & Scorned - Only a month old & already chock full of sweet soul, gospel stomps & scratchy, right off the cylinder blues.

Number One Songs In Heaven - The name says it all.

Moistworks - More soul, jazz & funk, from good people on the other side of the Atlantic.

Furniture + 80ft. Screen = F U N

There's a furniture store in Natick/Reading that has an IMAX 3D movie theater. I have no explanation, I just wanted to point it out.

Word(s) I Like 1

Almost a new year. How about a new feature? What's that you say? How about updating more frequently? Sure! But how about something I'd like to call "Word(s) I Like"? Catchy, ain't it? Here's the first one:

deaccession /v/ To remove and sell (a work of art) from a museum's collection, especially in order to purchase other works of art.

Subscribe to me

12 months of photographs for $150. It's a square deal. Email if interested. rob at lomblad dot net.

Clearing out the inbox

Create your own church sign

Nigo is a wealthy young man.

Gerald Cosley (of Matador Records fame) really, really likes sports.

A lot of well put together short video bits on the clean & easy Post22 skateboarding site.

Amazon's top 50 books of 2004.

Every bit of the printed matter created by the quartet of Holy Consumption artists is worth the money you should pay for it.

One day I will ride brakeless on the track at Kissena.

A whole lot of images from a Barry McGee show down under.

A collection of found photos.

A conversation with Christian Patterson at Coincidences.

Mr. Sun is a mysterious figure.

This guy has taken a lot of the work out of getting into Bollywood films & music.

There's a lot of stuff...

on the internet.

Metropolis

The New Yorker's staff architectural photographer Robert Polidori has a newish book out called Metropolis that focuses on his work in, uh, big cities. A lot of his photos in there leave me feeling neither hot or cold. It may be one of those situations where I think that a lot of the images rely on the weird otherness of the locations or the spectacular-ness of the architecture. There are a handful of of his other photos, mostly interiors like the one above, that have the something that I wish the rest did. I do like a lot of the work in his books Havana & Zones of Exclusion

All killer, no filler

Some random things to point your internet machine at while you wait for me to recover from the feeding frenzy that was the first final review of my MFA career. Email me if you're interested in the lurid details.

- Katy Grannan. Even though she cancelled her visit to MassArt because she had to move to the West Coast, I'm still into these portraits.

- Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 diary (excerpts). More evidence to add to your 'The Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey was nutso' file. Poached from somewhere.

- And speaking of Kubrick, here's an article on the same site about that 'only 3 exist in the world/invented for NASA' lens that he used for Barry Lyndon (maybe the only interesting thing about that movie aside from the fact that the lens allowed that to shoot with available candlelight. It's STINKERS!)

- More goodness from the Library of Congress. A selection of Walker Evans' FSA work. Look out for Dorothea Lange & Ben Shahn, too.

-This guy has a collection of over 2100 pairs of unworn shoes, mostly Nikes, including some really butt ugly ones. Unreal.

No Recess

Have you listened to Nirvana's Bleach lately? I think you need to put that shit in your Walkman & set the volume on 11. Permit yourself to play air guitar, regardless of who's around. It feels good.

House of Flying Wonkas

If you've yet to set eyes on the trailers for House of Flying Daggers or Tim Burton's Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, I suggest you remedy that.

Three young men, Uptown, Chicago

The George Eastman House has a pretty deep archive of images that you can browse through on their website. Great for wasting time on rainy East Coast days when you have better things to do. The image above is by Danny Lyon.

Check out this sausage!

Check out this article on "word-of-mouth" marketing from the NYT magazine this sunday. Creepers...people are lame.

Whole Lotta Something

[Insert retread apologies here]

I will update more once the monkey of wait-til-the-last-minute Power Point presentations & 15 page papers & self-reflexive research & how many prints do I need? is off my back for a minute, swear to Jeebus.

While you're waiting why don't you trying to answer the following questions (that are so closely related that they might as well be the same one): 1. What do hipsters look like in LA & 1a. Do I (you) have a LA hipster doppelganger? The answer to #1 is maybe that they look the same although they're wearing more makeup & their hair is nicer. They're more "LA". Also see if you can spot the ex-Chicagoan. Look here. Link cribbed from tinyluckyetc.

And by the way, if you live in the Boston area & were looking to engage the services of Unprofessional Movers Inc. you're out of luck because our two day Grand Opening/Grand Closing Sale ended today at 4:56 EST. Leave carrying other people's expensive sofas up narrow 1890s stairways for cash to those who are better at it & whose arm muscles may be better suited. I cannot make a fist & one of my fingernails is, if not purple, then slightly more pink than its neighbors.