How Mix 100.7 effects my everyday life, or how I feel old as hell at twenty-three

Well yes, I have started a new job - I pack things into boxes for a living now, and I punch numbers into a computer, which tells you what you've bought and, when I hit the enter key, how much money you should pay me for the items that I just rang you up for. It's on the little screen, on top of the pole, to your left... like in the big stores.

Lenny and Vinny's didn't have that price pole thing. I was kind of convinced that you were some awesome stuff if you had a customer price pole, if that's even what you call it - no, you have a price pole thing and you hook it into a computer. And then you have a price pole. Easy, huh?

Either way, and all the way, I've been forced to put up with a gross change in my daily musical programming. Back at L+V's, I had a selection of music that was fine-picked - at least, to Jeremy's taste. He ran the kitchen, after all. But... it was nearly constantly something that I dug the hell out of. I mean, REALLY dug - let's see, the Zombies, that Florida funk compilation, the Beatles, My Morning Jacket, etc. etc. etc. etc. (i.e., 98% of Jeremy's Ipod, give or take a Belle and Sebastian or Yo La Tengo album track or two. Love you, Jer).

But now, even though I generally like packing things into boxes and hitting buttons that translate into numbers that tell me what you've bought and how much you should pay for it (Hey! Look at that price pole, kid!), I am now generally forced to listen to Mix 100.7 all day, every day that I work in that place.
Am I upset? I was, the first couple days. But.... now.... I actually kind of like it.

........
(that's the silence that you're giving me - what, you don't understand? Now I've got to explain? Ah well - here we go:)

Take Colbie Caillat, for instance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PWfB4lurT4&feature=related

They deign it totally right to play this girl's two singles constantly - "Bubbly" and "Realize". I'm thinking that this girl has some kind of subliminal message buried in all her soft, soulful delivery, because her music is actually incredibly hypnotizing. I can't explain it. Her songs feel like Velveeta shells with bacon, on a breezy summer day.

Am I going crazy?

(I just spent the last ten minutes trying to find a screen grab of Charlie's "Pepe Silvia" monologue on the new It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I was unsuccessful, which is sad, considering that it would illustrate this point great.)

Jesus Christ.

........................
(Jim Rome pause)

"Realize" plays constantly. Like, five times a day. "Bubbly" is the more interesting, with its slightly amusing rhyme scheme, but they're pushing "Realize" like it was candy on Halloween, and Halloween was done fifty-four minutes ago. So I'm listening to "Bubbly" as I type this. I feel like packing boxes with objects wrapped in bubble wrap.

Yep!

So, back to the point of this blog, to which I alluded to in the title - see, the other reason I find myself liking Mix 100.7, other than hypnotizing new pop music from blond girls who play guitars, is the fact that they play songs from my youth - well, my relative youth. I'm only twenty-three, and that's not too old, I think. But still, I got into music at a pretty young age, and once I noticed Nirvana, I started noticing every piece of music around me. This lead to liking weird things like Fastball. It also lead to gaining a kind of sentimentality for the music of that era. You know what I'm talking about - 1996 to 2001, buddy.

Look at the price pole!

Stuff like this:



Remember when this song was awesome? This was all over the radio - it was the "Realize" of its day. Warm 94.9 had a fucking field day with it, complete with a tug-of-war and lemonade stand. However, a lot of the people who dug this song moved on. I never did. It still makes me feel all pensive. And Mix 100.7 plays it all the damn time. So, I listen. And I appreciate, not only because it's a finely-written pop song, but also because it reminds me of 5th grade. And of when MTV was good - remember that? (grabs walker)

But, I'll admit, it's pretty sad when I look forward to this, for the same reasons:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLqOwiZ8n5I

That's right... the Wallflowers.
I didn't even like this song when it came out. But now, I look forward to it. Why? Because it reminds me of being twelve. And I'd rather think about being twelve than have to consider that Santana with Chad Kroeger single. I hate it.

And they've never even played this one. I thought they would have, by now, but alas:



For a good pop single, this is hard to beat. 1998 represent.

And, to sum up, Mix 100.7 makes me feel ashamed for liking Hootie and the Blowfish ("Let Her Cry"? Totally look forward to that one too, when they play it every day), purely because (a.) most of the music surrounding it is sub-par, and (b.) it makes me feel incredibly ancient, because most of your hip kids these days don't care who Sixpence None the Richer is, or could give a fuck that Tom DuMont is an awesome guitarist, even though No Doubt, as a band, was just alright.

Curmudgeonly yours,

-Shane.

Badassness, as supplied by The Honeycombs and Pathe Films Limited

I've listened to this like twenty times in a row. Literally.

Two great pop songs from a little-known British Invasion group, with a girl drummer to boot. This was in Pop Gear and I was entranced back when I first saw it, as well as right now.



Peace.

A Saturday with my Canonet

With today being the first day of my first real two-day weekend in a matter of months, I was anxious to work on some kind of project. James and I have been recording a complete cover album of Waylon Jennings' Honky Tonk Heroes, and we're currently laying down tracks for "Omaha". I thought I might work on that, but Ryan and I were talking about cameras while getting lunch, so I decided to try and solve a question I've been thinking about for a while: will my trusty Canon Canonet co-operate with a battery and have a working meter?



(The Canon Canonet QL17, as photographed hung on a dusty door and with my finger covering the flash on the Kodak.)

My Canonet is quite precious to me, as I've explained before. If the top shutter speed ran to 1/1000 (and not just 1/500) and the body had interchangeable lenses, I would probably consider it perfect. As it were, though, it comes very close to perfect just as it is. Small, comfy, solid, reliable - these are all words that you want attached to a camera. The Canonet is all of these.
But alas, my Canonet has never been exactly perfect. The 1/4 shutter speed generally sticks open, the vertical part of the rangefinder was mis-aligned, a 25-year-old battery was in the battery compartment when I bought it (and had oozed battery acid all in the battery cavity), and the viewfinder was cloudy. If I had spent serious money on the camera, I might have been ticked off, but since I got a great deal on it, I was willing to put a little work into it to make it great again.
Of course the light seals were done for - I replaced those right after I got it, which wasn't a hard job at all. But, I let sleeping dogs lie and used the camera as it was for a very long time. The horizontal calibration of the rangefinder was fine, and the shutter speeds were very much on time, so why let it sit?



(Brush Street, at Kennedy Boulevard, downtown Tampa - something like f/11 at 1/500)

Another good thing about the Canonet is that, even though it has a built-in meter and an aperture-priority mode, it is also gives you the option of going completely manual. My Canonet was in no shape to take a battery when I got it, so to take advantage of the sharp lens and smooth action, I was stuck with setting the shutter speed and aperture myself. That's right, the light meter was me. And I didn't really care. In fact, I still don't.



(This was taken f/8 at 1/250. How do I know that? 'Cause I set it there!)

Once you learn the sunny f/16 rule, and learn the extremely rudimentary rules for exposure compensation, it's a simple matter of multiplying or dividing to get the right exposure. Yet, I read about a lot of photographers who don't know how to expose manually, or don't even want to know. Ah well - when my batteries go out, I'll still be taking pictures.

Anyway, back to the main subject. I was simply curious to see if my Canonet's meter would even work. I don't even use it, so it wasn't going to be a matter of heartbreak if it didn't. Since you can make cheap hearing-aid batteries work in the Canonet, I thought it'd be neat to see it come to life. However, the leaky battery that had a nice home in the battery compartment for years had rusted out the battery contact. I set to work with the Q-Tips and alcohol, and when that scrubbing didn't work, popped off the bottom plate. Sadly, I didn't get a picture of that - you might have seen my face lit up in amazement, as I've never broken into a camera before. The Canonet's guts are a work of art - chock-full of little springs and levers. It was great to ogle at for a second.

Either way, I took out the battery compartment and still had no luck getting the battery contact clean. I might have tried to use lighter fluid as a cleaning solution on the contact, but I didn't feel like it. I don't need a working meter. Why trouble myself too much to get it to work? Even after putting the bottom plate back on, I wasn't satisfied in my exploration. I decided to go ahead and fix some of the problems that had annoyed me - the cloudy viewfinder, and the out-of-whack rangefinder. And to do this, I had to go where I had never gone before - the final frontier - under the top plate.



(Canonet with top plate off, and protection plate pried off the top of the rangefinder housing - three different views)

The top plate was very simple to take off - it's only held on by three screws, the rewind knob, and the film advance lever. The latter two screw out very easily... just don't close the back door with the rewind knob off the of the camera. You'll have no way of opening it, save getting a paperclip and digging around in there to release the catch. Luckily, I didn't have to do that.

Cleaning the viewfinder does so much for the camera. What you thought was a pretty good finder is turned into a FUCKING GREAT finder when you clean it. I didn't touch the inner glass at all, just scrubbed the pieces of glass attached to the top plate, inside and out, with Windex dripped onto the end of a Q-Tip. The most dirt is on the outside of the rear viewfinder window, from years and years of skin cells and facial oils getting rubbed on it. You never knew that your viewfinder wasn't stained brown from the factory. It's a thing of beauty, people.



(I didn't get a "before" picture, but this is what your Canonet's viewfinder should look like, in theory. If not, you're cheating yourself.)

So, after that, I adjusted the rangefinder, both horizontally and vertically. The vertical was a cinch, but I found out that even the horizontal was out of alignment. So, I adjusted it to infinity. And, when I get my test roll developed, hopefully my adjustments will have been right. Hmm.

Otherwise, el Canonet is still running smoothly. The 1/4 shutter speed still sticks open about half the time, but I never use it, so it's a low-priority worry.
Can't wait to go out and shoot a good roll in it - test roll first, though.

1973

Life on Mars is a pretty good TV show. It's only on its second episode and I'm quite interested to see how it turns out. I mean, there's faults in it (television is rarely perfect), but on the whole, it's entertaining.

The synopsis, for anyone who hasn't seen it, goes something like this: a New York detective is hit by a car and, when he wakes up, finds himself thirty-five years in the past - in 1973, of all years. Harvey Keitel plays his "new" police chief, and Michael Imperioli also makes the scene as a fellow detective. Good casting.

Sometimes, I wish I could go back to 1973. You can't help but love 2008, but 1973 would also be great. Why? Because you could counterfeit money and probably not get caught; fly on planes without a hassle; and get good photo finishing in any drugstore!

There were also record stores! You could walk into a music store and it was filled with racks and racks of sealed vinyl - a weird idea. My friends and I salivate over buying used, ratty vinyl - I can't imagine walking into a record store back then and buying those same records brand-new and sealed, waiting for you to open and play them for the very first time. That'd be very close to heaven, I imagine.

Of course, that'd probably be the best reason to go back to 1973 - the music. The early '70s were a crazy time for good albums. Many of my favorite artists were at the top of their game in 1973. I mean, this came out:




Need I say more?

There was also this:



Listening to this makes you kind of a dork, though. I'm spinning it now, so that says a lot about your boy Shane.

My buddy Dallas had done one of his drawings, and when he was at my house, he pulled it out and asked Jeremy: "Dude, would you wear this on a shirt?"
Jeremy says: "No dude, I wouldn't wear a shirt with poetry on it," and walked away. Jer was referring to the three lines of poetry on the bottom of the drawing. I can't remember what those lines were, but I have to admit, they probably weren't shirtable.
So, this led to a conversation between me and Dallas a few days later, online. He said that he agreed - his three lines of poetry were not worth printing on a shirt. I brought up that ANY poetry would probably look horrible on a shirt.
"I mean, my favorite poem would make a pretty tacky shirt," I said.
"Which poem is that?"
"This one:

And did those feet, in ancient time, walk apon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God on England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the countenance divine shine forth apon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here, among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold;
Bring me my arrows of desire;
Bring me my spear, O clouds unfold;
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

I mean, you could put some wolves and trees on that shirt, and sell it at RenFest," I remarked.
Dallas agreed with me - even my favorite poem, and one by William Blake, would look crappy on a shirt. And it's true - can you think of any serious poetry that would look absolutely badass printed on a T-shirt?

"That poem is kind of heavy-handed, but good." That was Dallas' opinion of it. The heaviness of it is what makes it work for me - the first stanza refers to the story that Jesus visited England as a young man, but oddly enough, doesn't affirm it. All four of the lines are simply questions - maybe he did visit England, and briefly create a heaven on earth here. Maybe he didn't, though - but does it matter? Shouldn't England, becoming quickly choked by the "Satanic Mills" of the beginnings of the Industrial Era, be as good as that anyway? Well, screw it - we'll work to make England as best as it can be, and not think of stopping until it is.

And, honestly, shouldn't one treat life like that? Religious beliefs aside, it's a good way to think about life. When everything is shitty and horrible in your life, only you can really start the chain of events to make it better - and not effing stop until life is what you want it to be.
Cheesy? Definately. But it works for me.

Anyway, some smart guy decided to turn that poem into a hymn in 1916. I've never heard that version, but Keith Emerson, the keyboard genius of ELP, decided to persuade his two bandmates to cover it.



Would you trust this pretencious, two-keyboard-simeoultaneously-playing shaggy-haired English dude? Two other equally pretencious guys did, and henceforth created of my favorite songs of all time.

And "Jerusalem" opens this record, Brain Salad Surgery, which hit the shelves in November 1973. I can't speak about any kind of innovation the band might have made up to that point, having heard nothing else of theirs, save their very first album ("Barbarian", anyone?).

This album actually came into my house a full two or three years before I listened to it at all - my brother Ryan had bought the vinyl for a buck, purely because the cover was interesting. The sleeve is die-cut across the middle, and it opens to reveal an H.R. Giger painting, which must have amazed some serious prog nerds back then.

"Man, her skull is attached to some kind of robotic vise! How awesome!"

Anyway, a couple of years later found me spending most of my free time on a Pink Floyd message board, talking to people. Of course there were some serious prog guys hanging around, and one of them mentioned ELP to me. "Ever heard them?" Nope - "but I do have that one album with the cover that opens up." As soon as I said that, this certain guy wanted me to listen to it, immediately. "DUDE, IT'S AWESOME. BRAIN SALAD SURGERY." So, dredging up my "grab the thistle" mindset, I believe I ran to my room right then and stuck it on. I didn't really pay attention to it - I read a book while it played. But, my curiousity was perked enough, so I stuck it on a few more times over the next week or so. And... I got quite into it.

And this brings me to a question - why did prog bands always shoot themselves in the foot?

Let me explain. We all know that ELP are positively good musicians. Keith Emerson is the only guy I've heard who is a better Hammond organ player than Jimmy Smith; Carl Palmer is a tight-rolling drumming monster; and Greg Lake is probably the only bassist who could keep up with Keith Emerson, which says a lot about his style. But why, oh why do they have to know that they're good?!?!?!?! Them knowing that fact was terrribly dangerous to their group. In fact, it's still terribly dangerous to numerous bands today, all of whom are slowly drowning in good musicanship. The Mars Volta is one of them, and a lot of what I'm about to say also applies to them.

For instance - this record starts off amazingly. "Jerusalem" is as powerful as the poem is, and is quite a heavy experience when listened to loudly in a car - like I said, it's one of my favorite recordings of all time. They follow this with "Tocatta", which, as an adapted classical piece, might have the casual listener duck away from it. But no - it's entirely instrumental, and entirely badass, a musical hodgepodge that flies at you with reckless abandon.

But, like I said above, their musicanship begins to smother them here. They try for a Greg Lake ballad, "Still... You Turn Me On", which, following the previous selection's fast, almost military ending, is kind of like having your Coke turn into Vanilla Coke - too sweet, and sadly arranged. It also has some of the most trite lyrics ever written, I imagine. Still, you can swallow it, if only expecting more musically-challenging badassness to follow.

And then... "Benny the Bouncer"? They've turned your Vanilla Coke into rusty nail water, and any kind of respect that you might have gotten from your friends about liking ELP was just thrown out of a speeding car window, landing in a ditch, never to be seen again. Damn.

If you sat through that, you might be rewarded with the Hammondalicious intro to "Karn Evil 9" and the complexity of something they decided to call the "First Impression, Part One" of the same title. But, past this point, you're reminded of thirty-five years' worth of "Roll up, SEE THE SHOW!!!" imitations and treated to increasingly vague and appalling prog musical arrangements - over an entire side of vinyl, some twenty minutes. Eventually, in the "Third Impression", you're given computer voices to deal with: Keith Emerson, no doubt filtered through a MiniMoog, intoning futuristic verse:

"STRANGER!
DANGER!
LOAD YOUR PROGRAM.
I AM YOURSELF."

Does it matter at this point that the entire "Karn Evil 9" has a theme, which is about a society in the future that eventually gets so smothered in technology that computers take over mankind's existence? Does that make this entire thirty-minute song worthwhile? Or do you feel like me, when you collapse in a heap after trudging through this huge chunk of musical pretentiousness - overwhelmed and a little embarrassed?

And this is what I mean. ELP was, simply, too talented for their own good. They took those talents seriously - way too seriously - and basically ruined what could have been a thouroughly amazing album. Regrettably, they took it apon themselves to write serious music, which, to them, had to be filled with bleeping synths and confusing lyrics. It's no coincidence that my favorite ELP material - "Jerusalem" and "Tocatta" off of this album, and "The Barbarian" off of their first - are covers. They had the musicanship to turn a piece of serious music on its head, but didn't have the foresight to make their own material as timeless, which is frustrating, when you get down to it. They were amazing musicians.

And, in a nutshell, that is what prog does, both yesterday and today. This makes it one of the most challenging genres of music to listen to, and, consequently, one of the hardest to really like.

In this space, for the next few days, I'm going to review different albums from 1973. I'd do another, but I have to go to bed - peace.

Something to think about

Would you trust this man?

Psych Major Syndrome

I've known Alicia for a long time - almost eight years now. Yet, amazingly, I had never read anything of hers (even though she's been published twice in Girl's Life - I never got around to reading those, which was plain-ass inconsiderate, now that I think about it. Sorry, Alicia).

This week, promo copies of her first book, Psych Major Syndrome, arrived in a neat cardboard box. She gave one to me, and I decided to dive into it with ferocity. It was worth it - it's a totally charming book, written with good flow. Also, it's hard to write honestly and not seem pretentious about it, and yet she does it with ease. This book is Alicia - and perhaps that's what is so refreshing about it.
For instance - I read the entire Twilight series recently. I give Stephanie Meyer credit for thinking up a good story, with the ensuing plot twists, and interesting characters. (I won't credit her for her writing style, but I won't go into that now.) But the characters are just that - interesting. With the exception of Jacob, I didn't find any of the characters particularly amazing, or relatable. For the most part, the vampire characters don't even belong to this age, and the one other major character who does, Bella, doesn't quite ring true to me.

But it's different in Psych Major Syndrome, and not nessacarily because I'm immediately familiar with most of the people that the characters were based on. To me, if a book like this is going to work, and be relatable, then its characters have to have faults, simply because no-one is perfect. Quite a few of Twilight's characters are above having faults, and that also annoys me endlessly. So, when Leigh Nolan announces that she brought her boyfriend Andrew a San Francisco snow globe as a "sex present" and breaks it at the exact wrong moment, or totally throws up a BLT while on a roadtrip with the guy she's secretly in love with, it makes me smile. That would never happen to Bella Swann, and if it did, it would be twisted into something dark and poignant. In this book, it's just embarrassing. And that's the way life is. I love it.

Alicia Thompson, ladies and gentlemen.

Two good live albums.

For instance, this is what I'm listening to right now, for the first time:

I've had this for a while, but never stuck it on. I decided that nothing ventured was nothing gained, so I slipped it on, for a first-time listen. It's pretty great: the band was amazingly together at this point, which makes sense, considering that they had basically toured for two straight years previous to this. "In My Room" still sparkles, even when smothered in girls' screams. (Oddly enough, they cover "Monster Mash" with Mike Love on lead vocals. It's passable.) At its best moments, it's powerful, trebly surf music, all Strats and loud drums - spin "Let's Go Trippin' " at the end of side 1, to hear what I mean.
And, as a side note, I wouldn't mind having those Fenders that they're playing on the cover. Matching white Strat, Jaguar, and P-Bass with rosewood necks? Are they trying to tempt me to build a time machine and the nerve to steal things?

This reminds me of my favorite vintage live album, so I think I'll listen to that next. Which album is that? It's this one:



It's hard to describe this album - it's a searing example of what Bo Diddley could do if you gave him his guitar, a tube amp, and an able-bodied backing band. It roars, it rocks, and it rolls you into a frenzied, jittery excitement if you listen to it at a loud volume. This was recorded live in July 1963, before those Beatles came across the water - and this proves that Bo was rocking WAY harder than them, even in their seedy Hamburg days. Like, ridiculously harder.
Most of all, this album rips you a new one because it's so unbelievely raw. The amps were definately turned up to eight at this show, and the drummer seems like the kind of guy who will speed everything up double-time if you give him the chance. He takes that chance liberally - like "Gunslinger", which was pretty tame in the studio, is transformed into a fast twister in the hands of this drummer, and Bo responds accordingly, strumming with a speed that you thought he was incapable of - and the rest of the band feeds off of Bo, giving it their all. Caught up in the vibe, Bo felt it proper to shout his vocals for most of the album. His guitar tone in these early years was his signature - sinous, overdriven, and pulsing with vibrato, and unique in the sense that I've never heard anyone else reproduce it. It sounds the best here.
Morever, this album just sounds great. Why? Because my copy is beat to shit. I bought it at a flea market garage sale for two or three dollars. No, it wasn't one of those "Jesus, this thing is pristine, and I got it for a steal!" moments. I knew it was going to sound pretty horrible, and I bought it anyway. The vinyl itself is caked with decades of dirt and fingerprints, and my lame attempts to clean it only left swirls on the grooves. However, I feel like this is the way it's supposed to sound - all muddled and crackly. The dirtiness only helps it sound more raw and heavy, and I don't mind, because it's been loved, and given hours and hours of entertainment in return. This little slab of plastic commands respect.

Everyone is in bed, and I'm trying hard not to blast this record. Maybe I should go to bed too. Look forward to more album reviews soon - I enjoy writing them.

Joe Biden

(I would give someone credit for taking this, but I don't know who took it. It's a damn good picture. And you can also watch the speech itself on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_wWVbzefPo )

So, I saw Joe Biden at USF yesterday morning. It was mainly a matter of getting up at 6:30 AM, to get to the Sun Dome at 8 AM or so. (Doors were at 8:30 and Jer and I didn't want to be far back in line.) And... yes, there was a breakfast element involved too. I mean, you can't go out and do something at 8 AM and not have some food in your stomach. McDonald's is a godsend for this. Sweet tea just makes the morning meaningful.

Anyway, Joe Biden was awesome. He was saying some truthful stuff - "dropping truth bombs," as Jeremy called it. I don't like to wax about politics too much - unlike photography and music, it's one subject where I'm not too well-versed - but Joe Biden seems like a smart, down-to-earth man.

To clarify: I've been interested in Obama since the first televised debates back in March or so, but I turned into a full-time backer when I saw his Presidential nomination speech, which was (cliche time) like a re-awakening of sorts, for me.

Let me explain that. I'm going to sit here right now and say that, based on actions and decisions, I have two favorite Presidents. Those would be John Kennedy and Bill Clinton. Regrettably, I wasn't alive for Kennedy's (short) tenure in office, but I was for Clinton's. And, when you get down to it, your liking for a President only relies on one thing: can you trust the guy? Do his actions and thoughts and statements scare you, or comfort you? Do you have faith in your government to make things right, with this man at the helm? I felt that way about Clinton - he made sense. He was sensible. When he said something in television, no matter how frivilous or serious it was, he said it straight, and without judgement. Can you say the same about George W. Bush? Nope - at least, I can't. Sure, it felt good to have a hard-core Texan as President during 9/11 - for the first night. But things felt different a few years later - and that's all I'm going to say about that.

Anyway, back to that spiritual regeneration I had, earlier in this blog: when I saw Obama speak, I was refreshed. For years, I have not liked seeing our current President on screen. It's almost like I'm waiting for him to fuck up somehow, say something that makes me embarrassed to be an American (which a President should never do, I think). But, above all, I was scared of Bush. I didn't trust the guy, even though I'd never met him. He just didn't feel right to me.

But Obama - now, I've heard some speeches in my day. But his nomination speech was amazing. It made me think a lot, a lot of what-ifs: what if we he gets elected? As stupid as it sounds, will our country be great again, like it was when Clinton was President? I hope so. But, above all, Obama seemed like a man that I could trust as President. And so did his running mate, when I saw him on a podium in the same room as I - seemed like a trustworthy man. And amid the economy and the health-care issues, and all that (which are incredibly important matters, don't get me wrong), perhaps that's all that should count. As an American, it's something that we all have to do - put our trust in the persons that we elect into office. It happens every four years. And, to that end, go with who sits right, with your own morals and judgements - for me, that's Obama and Biden.

And, casual chatting aside, that's all I have to say about politics.

Beatles fanatic

I was just adding a Beatles song to a mixtape I'm making, and I found this stuffed in the sleeve of an early mono copy of Meet the Beatles, which I've had for a while but never really listened to.



These were someone's favorites, and they felt compelled to write them down and stuff them in the sleeve, for some reason.

This is one of the many reasons that I love vinyl.

Annoyance, part one

To my drugstore photo finishers:

I admit, I'm not paying you a lot. $2.39 for running a roll of 35mm color negative film through your mini-lab is a fine, fine price. However, I have a couple of gripes.
One, hire employees who give a damn. A certain drugstore at the corner of U.S. 301 and Progress has totally failed in coming through with my film not once, but TWICE. Like, showing up an hour later and it not even being touched. You promised sixty minutes, and I know that running a roll through your mini-lab, plus the cutting and sleeving, is a ten-minute process, tops! Someone just didn't feel up to doing it, TWICE. And that is frustrating.

And secondly, also on the subject of hiring employees who give a damn, also give your film specialists two important lessons about the handling of film:
1. "Those white gloves that we give you serve a purpose" - don't cut and sleeve my negatives with bare hands. And, almost every time, the same people who handle my negatives without gloves are the same people who leave fingerprints all over them. *I* have to clean those off, damnit.
2. "The drying of the negatives is still an important process of film developing." Take for instance the time before last that I got film developed, and the lady who took my film left it on the counter before she left. Just left it there, uncut and unprotected. The manager had to cut and sleeve my film, and of course, it came out looking like a pig's tail in a 1930s cartoon.



You guys have the knack for making my film curly as hell, for some reason. Whenever I get my film developed at the corner of Howard and Swann, in Tampa (nudge nudge), it's never curly like this. The people there know what they're doing. Yet, here in Riverview, this is the result. Different minilabs? Or people who just don't give a damn?

I'm not asking you to mess with the chemicals, or make me prints, or scan the damn things. I just want my negatives. And it's not hard to do.

Thank you -

-Shane.

Damn

Untitled, originally uploaded by Shane Guy.

In this blog, I will also take occasional shots of mine and put a little background behind them, or critique them, or ask for opinions.

And remember to click on the picture for a link to the Flickr page from whence it came - the one you see here was most probably automatically cropped. Bleh.

I'll make a few remarks for this one:

1. I can't title the damn thing. I was going to pinch from Henri Cartier-Bresson and call it "The Decisive Moment", but I'm not even really into Cartier-Bresson, to be honest.

2. This is kind of like the work of Garry Winogrand, but too far away. And that's the way I like it.

3. I shot this on the Canon Canonet. And I am in love with that camera.

4. I actually framed something good for once, which is surprising, considering I barely composed this when I snapped it.

5. Walgreen's Studio 35 is a underrated film, and I bought eight rolls of 200 ASA today for like $10 and change. Cheap, good film.

Comments? Opinions? I always welcome and appreciate them.

I have been quite influenced by my friends' actions -

So yes, a lot of my friends have blogs. (See my brother Ryan's, Straight from the Dog's Ass, as written by my best bud O'D, Jon Failes' blog, and the [hopefully] daily musings of Dallas Ross.)

I want to start leaving comments, so I figured that I'd register and start a blog of my own. I'd usually use MySpace for this, but why? People don't read blogs on there anyway - and it'd be better to use a dedicated blog for my musings, rather than a social networking site with a blog attachment.

So, I'll probably be writing about my main hobby right now - photography. I have a few cameras and a lot of film, and I like to shoot pictures of what I think is interesting. My main outlet for that is my Flickr page ( www.flickr.com/shane_guy ), to which I'm always adding things. I'll also write about music quite a bit, since I'm also in love with that, and I don't really have anywhere else to write about music.

I'll wrap this first post up for now - I might write later tonight or tomorrow. We'll see.