My friend Ryan (aka the Darkness), late of Georgia but more recently Allston MA, invited me to join an mp3 blog (still hate the word) that he & his friends have. Maybe because he thinks I might do an okay job but probably just to try & balance out the Boston/Atlanta axis a little bit more in his favor. Regardless, my first entry is there now. The tracks stay up for a few days & then are taken down. Please don't hit it too hard, I don't know exactly how much bandwidth I pay for & I'm afraid to look.
I don't have $10,000 on me at the moment but if I did, I would drop it's like you know what on the Vestax VRX-2000. Here's a review from like 2 years ago.
Mr. Kottke puts it best when he says, "This is what the internet was made for." So right.
What did I manage to do today? Registered at a temp agency & discovered that I can type 36 wpm (not the greatest ever), made two entries in my photo weblog (first since December!), and, after more than a year of thinking about it, I added a picture to the title banner of this here weblog. I also took a nap. Slacker circa 2005.
Let me tell you a story. You are, of course, already on the edge of your seat.
I am basically unemployed. Basically. I have a steady 5 hrs/wk job at school, a still-forming assistant type relationship with two different photographers & some magazines on eBay. Money in the bank as of yesterday, Monday morning: $8.03. So, I've been looking. I spent 5-6 hours before the ol'laptop computer checking out every job site in the Boston area, typing "photo, photography & photoshop" in search fields repeatedly. Not much was coming my way. I emailed several people, including one lady from craigslist interested in paying a couple of people $150 a piece to help move her couch to Brooklyn.
Towards the 360th minute of my search I came across an ad for Verizon looking for a "Splice Service Technician". I clicked on it & read the description. Totally uninteresting except for the part that mentioned that, upon hiring, you'd be paid to attend Line School (learn phone wiring or something) AND Pole Climbing School! You'd get paid to learn how to climb poles! Not a single pre-pubescent dirty joke entered my head. I actually thought, "Wouldn't it be funny to get a job at Verizon & go to Pole Climbing School?" So I signed up for a test. You have to take some test that will tell them whether you're smart enough to be taught how to repair phone lines (and climb poles). I went down there this morning in the ugly weather & waited with 50 other sad looking people while Tom & Dana the test-givers sharpened pencils & sorted Scantron sheets. After everyone was seated they explained to everyone how use said Scantron sheets & reminded us not to begin until we were told to do so by them, the test-givers. The morning portion (yes there is an afternoon portion) of the tests consisted of insanely basic reading & mathing plus my favorite section, Spatial Comprehension (or Awareness or Something Like That), in which you were presented with an isometric view of some arrangement of blocks & asked to choose the figure which would best describe the top view. Along with the aforementioned reading section, it was the only one I finished. Really. The math section, which actually started to get a little more difficult ended just as I filled in my 45th oval. The 45th of 125! I wanted to steal the little test printout to show people but they had the security on full lockdown. They even took the scratch paper, which is probably for the best because I don't need anyone to know how pathetic my attempts to remember how to divide fractions were.
After lunch at Subway, we got our results. I passed & was eligible to take the Line Technician Test Module I & II or whatever it was called. It was at this point that I had the first urge to split. What was possibly funny seemed like maybe way too much work. But then I stayed and took the second set of tests. These involved reading & rereading a packet of information (The History of Telecommunications, Types of Cable, What is Attenuation?, How to read a Work Order Receipt Claim Check Form Sheet (a W.O.R.K. Sheet as it's called)) & then having the packet taken from you & replaced with a blue test booklet. I finally got to put my free after-school PSAT prep class skills to good use. I took those tests like Goldfinger took Fort Knox. (Sorry). I was actually nervous when they were reading the names & semi-disappointed when I passed. "So what happens now?" you ask. After passing all their tests & sitting in a semi-comfortable chair for five hours, me & six other guys (no ladies but the only one there were applying for some other job I think) sat at a conference table while Tom explained to us how to fill out each & every one of the 16 pages of the application. The application! I started & stopped writing several times in ten minutes before I got my jacket & left. I told the lady at the desk that I'd changed my mind & she was all shruggy-like, "meh...". And then I was out, on the street, a free, still unemployed young man, walking in the pea soup in our fair city that passes for late May.
Meh.
What happens when hipster art opening joke-y mayhem goes awry? This happens.
On a related note, as part of the NY Times sub-makeover, they've done at least one amazing thing: a new picture for each page of a multi-page story. A small thing but a great thing.
I went to see Gang of Four the other night. My mind was practically blown, put on some higher sort of terror alert status. The old men still have it. Andy Gill killed, his guitar tone alone could do the convincing. Is there such a thing as involuntary air-guitar? Jon King stalked back & forth between mics, shirtless under a suit jacket, did his weird football/army training dance. The highest point among many was "He'd Send in the Army" during which King beat what was either an old amplifier or an air condtioner with an aluminum bat. For the entire song. Opening band Radio 4 seemed like an X-Games commercial in comparison. Or maybe not even. My Wire experience a few years ago was tempered by the unfamiliarity & sometimes outright dislike of the latter-day stuff. There was barely a hint of that at Gof4. Everything off of Entertainment & Solid Gold sounded just as raw & urgent as it did when I heard it for the first time (Carlos' hand-me-down tape of Urgh! A Music War circa 1992). A couple of 3rd LP or later duds that sounded like Echo & the Bunnymen b-sides were lost among all the favorites. Extraneous highlights included Hugo Burnham's headset mic & his VIP cheering section w/infant, ubiquitous old punk dudes with ponytails & seeing Mass Art faculty dance in place.
Star Wars III - Revenge of the Sith is either the 3rd or 4th best of the series. Probably 3rd, beating out Jedi. Star battles, Yoda v. Palpatine & the Wookie planet make it worthwhile. The script blows to the point of actually feeling sorry for the millionaires who have to deliver the lines. My friend Ryan bought our tickets on craigslist for face-value.
Deerhoof overcame feedback issues & totally weird, airport-style security (I had to hide my swiss army knife in a planter) to make everybody smile for 65 minutes. Also, two 10 yr. old punk kids being encouraged to get Satomi Matsuzaki's autograph by their parents & some guy made amazing sound-sensitive, garbage can lights which may be impossible to explain. Pictures later.
Ken Kagami is the guy who did the Milk Man cover for Deerhoof.
No, seriously. School's out for summer. Weblog entries forthcoming. For that other one, too. I can feel your baited breath on my neck. Chew on the Encyclopedia of Chicago while you wait.
And I liked the Hitchhiker's Guide movie, if you were wondering, which you weren't.
I was going to explain the origins of Background Boy but decided against it. Ask Carlos.
I'm less interested in the power of weblogs to change policy, effect change etc, than I am in the fact that the Los Alamos National Laboratory has one that's public. (from the NYT). Also, at the end of the story, they mention that the gov't might sell the lab to someone like Lockheed Martin or some other giant defense contractor. That's a bit frightening.
