External.

Microblog #11

2010-12-06T00:27:00.000-08:00

Microblog #10

2010-12-04T23:01:00.000-08:00

Microblog #9

2010-12-03T13:01:00.000-08:00

Microblog #8

2010-12-02T09:01:00.000-08:00

Microblog #7

2010-12-01T08:22:00.000-08:00

Microblog #6

2010-11-30T12:32:00.000-08:00

Microblog #5

2010-11-29T19:22:00.001-08:00

Microblog #4

2010-11-28T23:16:00.000-08:00

Microblog #3

2010-11-26T12:25:00.000-08:00

Microblog #2

2010-11-24T23:43:00.000-08:00

Microblogs (introductions)

2010-11-24T00:11:00.000-08:00

Gloomy Sunday

2009-03-26T00:20:00.000-07:00

As most of you know, I’ve been working my ass off lately - I worked eighty hours last week, for instance. It didn’t feel like eighty hours, but I put all the hours together and bam, there it was. I never thought that I’d work eighty hours a week in my entire life; and suddenly, I have. It’s not bad, though, because I love my job and the people I work with.
And, to that end, I haven’t had time to work on anything personal. My Sundays off are more concerned with doing necessary things, like laundry and the like, rather than going to Tampa and taking photographs. I’m also dabbling more in music these days, since my guitar is right here - but, give it another month or two and I’ll be back into photography. That’s just how I work.
Anyway, the last time I worked on a personal project was, amazingly, twenty-five days ago. Right before I started working at NYNY, I read about this thing called SoFoBoMo, where the mission is to produce a book of thirty-five original photographs in thirty days or less. (Look it up - it's a very interesting premise.) It had me intrigued, so I read hurriedly, stored most of the info in my mind, and went to King Corona early the next day.
The amusing part of going to Corona before a photography project is this: writing out photography plans is like trying to fight a war via text message - it’s pointless to sit there and write out your plans when you can actually go out and do them. Still, I never learn - and here, as you can see, I attempted to plan my solo book, and then cursed myself for ordering a large-sized café con leche, as it quickly dawned on me that light was failing:

Gloomy Sunday - photographs by Shane Guy.
The idea was to document, quickly and cleanly, exactly how Tampa was on March 1st, 2009. It was overcast outside, and the air had a bite to it - I thought it’d be interesting to document Tampa in this kind of weather, not the balmy-sunshine-palm tree way. It’s Sunday. Downtown is abandoned. This is how it really is - not like a brochure, but still very beautiful in its own way. Hence, Gloomy Sunday.
I thought I would shoot about one-hundred or one-hundred-and-fifty frames, take them home, and pick and edit the best of them - and then pick thirty-five frames from that pile, which would be my book.
Gloomy Sunday.

However, I got downtown and it didn’t feel right. For one, there was a fierce wind blowing, and sand was getting all over the place. For two, I didn’t bring a jacket, and I was freezing. For three, I had no idea if the project start date had occurred, which cast a feeling of doubt over the project - that is, I could have busted my ass and shot a lot of frames, only for them to be theoretically worthless. So, I took some frames, was disappointed, and went home.
So, twenty-five days later, I finally found the time to transfer those frames, edit them, and post them. And yes, they are quite useless for the book project - since they were shot a full two months ahead of the start date. But now, they are a small collection of their own, which is still pretty cool. So there.

I have so many blog ideas - but no time to write them. One day, one day.

Watch this space

2009-02-17T20:24:00.000-08:00

Hello readers - any and all of you.

I have been recovering from illness lately. Hence, no blogs.

I promise to rectify this shortage of writing in the near future, possibly tomorrow.

Here's a taste of my next blog:

-SMG

The Sunday Before the Tuesday: the saga and utter inconvienience of the Idea Revolts

2009-01-20T20:44:00.000-08:00

I’ll admit it - I am no good at starting a piece of writing. Often, the first lines I write of any blog/article/piece of writing are quite cliché. They’re often questions - or statements, like this one. The difference with this intro, though, is this: it is a cliché statement, out and out; I’m not denying that “I’ll-admit-it” is pretty damn cliché, and that it gives you an obvious opening to say anything: I.e. “I’ll admit it - I own a clown suit, and I use it to collect garbage. Why? Let me explain…” or “I’ll admit it - I backed Mitt Romney, because I want my President to look like the President from any mid-nineties disaster movie. It’s a comforting thought - hear me out” - no, the reason that the usage of a cliché opening here is okay is this: it explains itself - it is about itself. That makes it excusable - at least in my book… and all of this might be in a book one day, so I have the right.
(Or maybe that right was just cancelled out by the really bad pun I used to justify it - either way.)
But, writing is exactly everything that writing literally is, plus more. Writing is grinding something out of nothing - looking at a blank piece of paper and wondering what the fuck to write about. There’s always so much to write - things that bounce around inside my head, that beg to be enumerated, blasted, shaped, and expounded upon. These are the dreams of my ideas - that’s what they dream about at night. Ideas sleep by lying dormant, so they sleep, and dream of being useful - totally useful, used to express something or another.
But ideas - and their personal dreams - are often squandered by the communicator, the two-hundred-and-sixty-pound, near-sighted bag of blood and sinew and skin that typifies myself - and they sit in my mind, sleeping and living, until I can force myself to shape and expound on them, with the movements of a writing instrument. Sometimes my ideas are suppressed - for years and years - they never see the light of day, they yearn for that light - and I, as the communicator, keep them suppressed. Poor ideas, at the mercy of their keeper - but that’s life, regrettably - that the communicator is hampered by moods, laziness, and the fucking cursed thing known as “writer’s block” - again, that’s life.
What’s interesting, though, is when ideas get crafty and try to make themselves known - at the displeasure of myself, the communicator, who is in no shape to expound upon them. They want to get worked on and written up - and they attack my train of thought, and try to derail it. They’re like rebel ideas - they’re trying their damndest to get out.
I imagine that ideas, with all the downtime they have, get together and plan revolts. They occasionally succeed in the fullest possible manner - that is, get seized upon, throttled, finessed, and, in the end, typed and edited and read by someone. Most of the time, though, they get out, but written down and incorporated in the most horrible, awkward way. When this happens, and they see themselves flayed out on a piece of paper, looking all un-worked and entirely unfavorable, I wonder if they ponder the situation and thing to themselves, “Goddamnit - I should have just stayed in there a little bit longer.”
Here, for your reading pleasure (and to prove that I’m not a lunatic with nothing to really write about), is a fully unedited, true-to-the-letter, factually-accurate, blow-by-blow account of an Idea Revolt. When you read this passage, put yourself in my position - sitting in a café, on a lazy Sunday, with a loud football game enveloping the room, and a blank sheet of paper in front of you. The Ideas formed and pushed, linked together in the most random fashion, no doubt drunk on the nervousness and excitement that came with the unspeakably dangerous revolt, which they had planned for weeks - which was happening, really happening - and then they fell out onto the paper, embarrassed and gasping for breath:

“There’s ground-shaking football being played today. I believe today is the two games that decides who plays the Super Bowl. The first game is just starting - Jordin Sparks, American Idol herself, is taking her turn of glitzing up the National Anthem. I didn’t know that she had won American Idol; I just know her from her annoying singles on the radio. Surrounding me are about ten moneyed 20-types, who are choking on cigars and watching the game. Six of them just left - maybe the environs weren’t up to their liking. I have no idea.
It is the Sunday before the Tuesday. This Tuesday is not only notable for Barack Obama’s inauguration; it is also the day that, for the first time, I will go to court - well, traffic court. Very historical - our first black president, and a guy in Tampa goes to court for the first time. That should make the Tribune, at least.
I’m currently supporting the Cardinals. That makes me a party of one on this side of the café.
Kurt Warner!

As a note - I don’t like the new line of Budweiser “Drinkability” commercials… the new ones, with their “hey, look at this, I can create drawings out of thin air” is kind of boring - but then again, the old ones weren’t too imaginative either. The only reason I liked the old ones - other than their semi-surrealism - was the fucking cute red-haired girl in one of them.
“Fills you up?” - that was her.
All tall and thin - with an expressive face and, yes, brownish-red hair - that was a cute, cute girl. She was the only thing that made those certain Bucs games watchable - those games where we’re down two touchdowns at the beginning of the fourth - and there’s a chance, a sliver of a chance - that we could regain and, at least, make the game go into overtime. That would never happen, of course. We’d get one more touchdown, and that would lose us the game - just enough of a loss to make certain people royally pissed (my brother) and other people annoyed (myself).
Red hair kills me - on girls, at least. It goes well with blue eyes - which aren’t so special, according to a song that I wrote about fifty feet from this very spot more than two years ago.
Don’t get me wrong - I like blue eyes. They look nice. They’re occasionally entrancing. But a lot of people have them, especially a lot of girls. Blue eyes aren’t the single thing that makes a girl special - that’s what I meant by that song. And not all blue eyes are special - they might be, and probably are, but they’re not always what they’re cracked up to be.

In the meantime, while I’ve mused about the Budweiser girl, and Bucs, and blue eyes - the Eagles have scored a field goal and, just now, stripped the ball from my buddies, the Cardinals. I believe the middle-aged guy at the other table is trying to bait me - “It’s cheap, but we’ll take it!” he’s repeated three times, looking at me directly. The Eagles suck - their fans are shit, lobbing batteries and stuff. Fuck them. I don’t see Cardinals fans starting riots.
Now, they’re getting first down after first down - unbearable. I’m not gonna stand for this shit.
Maybe Raheem Morris will groom the Bucs back to their Super Bowl glory, and we’ll beat the Eagles’ ass next year. That would be beautiful.

Touchdown Cardinals!

I’m not getting much done here. Football has me distracted. But this is real life - the Sunday before the Tuesday - and if I had control of things, the Cardinals would go to the Super Bowl, and I’ll have a nice time in court. Barack Obama is already going to be President - that’s the best part of all.
And if you take anything from this pile of hodge-podge that would even make Judy Hill blush - let it be that.”

Bob Dylan, when asked how he wrote a double-album’s worth of songs for Blonde on Blonde, replied that he was working at such a fast pace, that he had forgotten writing most of them - they just kind of poured out. When Dylan’s ideas revolted, stuff like “Just Like a Woman” and “Temporary Like Achilles” would, all of a sudden, exist - good, worthwhile, interestingly-worded songs.
This is because his ideas, when they revolted, were finely woven and well-put-together - that’s what I think, anyway. But my ideas aren’t like that - they’re like a group of peasants, working purely from instinct, trying to do anything to make their life better - even if it includes embarrassing their creator and communicator. Stupid ideas.
And, of course, the only ideas that revolt are the weird, stupid ones. Anything of importance is smart enough to stay in their place - inside my head - until they’re called upon and shaped and written - coddled, loved, and sculpted into a beautiful, worthwhile existence.
This is why I’m glad that I have the opportunity for multiple drafts. Also, when paper is introduced to fire, it has a tendency to turn into a pile of inscrutable cinders. This is a plus, even though I haven’t literally set fire to anything I’ve written since the eighth grade - no matter how bad or embarrassing it was. Fire is such a melodramatic thing, when you can just rip the stuff up with your bare hands - no risk of housefires, or devastating burns.
But, like any real person, those destroyed ideas can linger indefinitely in my head, in memory, for as long as they wish to… attached to another little idea, which might meet up with one of those huge, smart, important ideas, and procreate - into a large family of ideas, and when that happens - well, it gets seized upon and written about eventually - shaped, blasted, and expounded upon. Loved and coddled.

To that end, this is the Tuesday of the Tuesday… not the Sunday before the Tuesday, or the Friday after the Tuesday - today is that singular, tumultuous Tuesday. And, in detail, a lot of stuff turned out good since Sunday: Barack Obama was sworn in this morning, and it was quite moving; the Cardinals beat the Eagles and are now going all the way to the Super Bowl - which is being held in this lovely city; traffic court was a groove, because the judge dismissed my ticket in fifteen words, and I walked out without owing anyone anything; and Monday was my last day of packing things safely and charging people for it, because I was laid off - and I find it hard to care about it, because I feel entirely free. Life is, again, a blank slate - and not just for me, but also for many, many people. It’s a great thing.
Life changes, like ideas do, at a fast and unpredictable speed. At the risk of sounding cliché, you’ve got to grab onto the reins and hold on with all your might. Something to consider.
And, with that, I’ve touched on everything I needed to - writing clichés, Idea Revolt, my life, and all the things that I wanted to write about. Ideas were used - and not in vain. That makes this piece at least semi-complete.
Ideas - like revolutionaries - never die in vain. They just look weird for a while.

King Corona (in tribute)

2009-01-13T18:58:00.000-08:00

King Corona has always been nice to me - well, for the most part. One time, I came here, half-starving and in the perfect, unshakable mood for a King Corona Cuban sandwich - with plantain chips, all warm and crunchy - and was rudely turned down, because the kitchen had technically closed down all of ten minutes before I got there. I was pissed - very angry - but then again, I was late.
But, as I was walking out the door, I was pretty sure that I saw Jimbo, the cook who would make those Cuban sandwiches (with plantain chips) that deserved perfect, unshakable cravings - still knocking around the building, somewhere. Or maybe I didn't - either way, after wasting a dollar to get my car out of the garage, I drove out to sweet Riverview and went to Taco Bell, and was awarded with a totally different order than what I asked for, which I took home and ate, in total anger, simmering about a lunch and, indeed, an afternoon ruined… but that’s another story.

Perhaps the Cuban sandwich snub was what I deserved for all those afternoons that I’d stumble in, all disheveled and carrying an evil-smelling “aristocratic” briefcase that I bought for like $12 at Sunshine Thrift, and bother Sarah for a Coke, and then sit in my corner, scheming and writing, looking unapproachable for up to three hours before grunting up from the chair, the perfect picture of a starving artist, whose hair was like a humid haystack in a life-threatening thunderstorm, with a wrinkled shirt and a face that said “I don’t give a shit about how I look, but my head is full of IDEAS that MUST BE WRITTEN DOWN - oh shit, so important” - walking up to the counter and pulling three sorry-looking dollar bills from my wallet - $2 for the Coke, $1 for a “tip” - and with a “See ya, darlin’ “ would walk my sorry ass to my car in 16th Street parking garage where, after a ride in those evil-smelling elevators, I would tender one dollar for my parking fee, and then treasure my one remaining dollar, which was earmarked for “whatever” - usually a small bag of chips from Whaley’s when I got bored enough at Lenny and Vinny’s to walk over and buy them, being left with a penny, since the chips themselves were all of 99 cents, and then being absolutely broke of bills until I had a delivery or two, or three, or none - whatever happened that evening, which was never, ever predictable, not at all - this is the life is a pizza-delivery man who fancies himself a writer/musician/man of the arts and plans his visits to the one place he can be creative around five whole one-dollar bills. It was a crazy, frustrating and wholly fun lifestyle. I lived it for more than a year.
Anyway, my point is this: I didn’t spend any good money here for a long time. A Coke - which is infinitely refillable around these parts - is the cheapest thing here, besides water. A café con leche is $3.25 or thereabouts, and a full lunch - the aforementioned Cuban sandwich (with plantain chips) and a Coke (since drinking heavy coffee and having a hot sandwich may be good for some stomachs, but not mine) came to $10 or $11, after a tip worthy of such a meal. I could not afford such luxuries in those days, so I stuck to my $3 special, which probably irked some of the managers here, thinking that my corner table might have been better filled up with a person or three who would get food and beer and wine and maybe some old port, and would pay something like $40 for these pleasures - or more, I’m sure. Instead, this table of mine was occupied by a scary-looking “artist” who would have fit in better in a halfway-decent “coffee bar” in L.A. or in Greenwich Village or somewhere that catered to my type, instead of an upscale cigar bar on 7th Avenue that had enough of an audience to consider offering 40-year-old port.
And, to that end, I’ve never had enough money to sample the 40-year-old port - or, for that matter, the 30- or 20-year-old port on call here. I can look at it - since it sits right behind the bar - but cannot afford to have the bottle cracked and a portion poured for me. I’ve often wondered how it tastes - probably like jewels in a glass, or at least I hope it does, for the price they charge for it - and thought about the act of drinking a liquid that was prepared by hoary old men in Europe in 1969. Must be an interesting experience.
But, my money situation in those times was dire enough that I couldn’t even look at those bottles of port and not feel an immature, rageful jealousy for the people who could thoughtlessly shell out $50-plus dollars for a taste of a drink that was prepared by hoary old men in Europe in 1969 - it was that bad, being a “starving artist”, being pointlessly jealous of men with money and a pad on Harbour Island, or, if they had a family, a house on South Orleans Avenue. I’m not jealous of those guys anymore, now that I have a little more money to play with; now, I like to laugh at their jokes, or treat them like humans, or occasionally be mad at them, when they use their money in bad ways that affect me personally. That’s not very often, though.

Even after a few paragraphs of rambling, I haven’t touched on what I was trying to get to - except the end of the last paragraph, which did mention my reversal of money-luck. And the entire point of this missive/essay/whatever is to praise this place, not bash the people who like to inhabit it - and I will fix this post-haste.
Anyway… since then, I’ve gotten a new job, which I wrote about before - but for anyone who hasn’t read it, here’s a recall: I pack things into boxes, make sure they won’t break in transit, and, after affixing a label to it which effects where its going to go, once an official Man paws it later, charging that person an amount of money. That total eventually gets paid. Next customer.
Or, if you wanted some stamps, I can sell you those, too. There you go.
It’s not a hard job. It pays decent - at least, more than I was usually getting delivering pizza. The only really horrible thing about the job is that it takes up most of my time… which is not entirely a good thing. I’m back on a regular old work schedule, which usually leaves me at the mercy of Saturday crowds, rush hours, and everything else that comes with being synched up with most of America’s employment times. I spent two years being un-synched - enjoying the pleasures of, say, going to the mall at 2 PM on a Tuesday, or taking photographs at an hour when most people were chained to a telephone, leaving the streets pretty empty. Getting synched up again was a hassle. It still is, actually.
Mercifully, I usually get one day off, during the working week. I spend this time off the grid - unhinged, as it were - happily having a temporary flashback to my “starving artist” days… and how fun it can be.
I miss them - I’m not going to lie. There’s a charm in having a quarter-tank of gas and five dollar bills between being relatively comfy and having an uncomfortable, boring bout of what Orwell called “enforced idleness” - a night-long stay in room 847 of Hotel Tedium - in the vast, slightly embarrassing land of Being Broke.
You should have heard me in those days - bitching to Dallas, to Jeremy, to Ryan, to Sarah, the cute-as, sweet-hearted, red-headed barista at this place (whom I mentioned briefly before as the Dispenser of the $2 Cokes, if you recall), and anyone with ears - bitching about money. “Goddamn it!” I would fairly shout (I don’t shout too much), “this life SUCKS!!” (Deserving of the double exclamation points, believe me.) “It’s supposed to be romantic! These are supposed to be the TIMES OF MY LIFE! And I positively, absolutely, without-a-doubt HATE IT!” (So on and so on - excuse my semantics, by the way - until the person I was talking to would be reduced to monosyllabic responses - or would change the subject - or think about what their cat, at home, was up to.)
But now - being removed from it - those were the times of my life. Kind of. Orwell (again with the Orwell - but he did write two of my favorite books, both of which dealt with poverty, on two different levels) wrote that once you’re broke, you find it hard to care about much. I can tell you, from experience, that he was being honest - “Only two francs lie between you and starvation,” and all that, from Down and Out in Paris and London - that’s what it feels like. I might not eat tomorrow - who gives a fuck.
Well, I was never that broke - except for a handful of occasions. I felt more like Gordon Comstock in Keep the Aspidistra Flying - stuck in a dingy, lower-middle class rut, convinced that a $20-dollar bill (or two) was the only thing between me and totally amazing, awe-inspiring artistic freedom. I was so broke, and sick of it, that I started becoming Gordon Comstock - believing everything he said, or thought - all that stuff about money-gods and how finances keep you from everything that, basically, makes life worth living - which made me a sad case, especially considering that his character was created as a satire. That’s right - George Orwell probably would have despised me, if not found my aping to be humorous. I might have given the old man a chuckle or two.

And how did Gordon end up? Married, in a much-detested “good job”, earning his four pounds a week, with an aspidistra in the window.
And how did I end up? Earning more than usual, but still trying to fit a creative life into a schedule that would better suit a weekend bar-hopper, or someone hoping for quiet domesticity. I’m not really like that, so combining the best of a moneyed life and my penchant for acting like a shabby old gentleman with a flair for the arts is proving unusual - but not entirely unsuccessful.
And that’s where this smoky, wood-walled place fits in - good old King Corona.

Here’s some - but, of course, not all - of the things that I like about this place:
It’s basically a hole in the middle of 7th Avenue - kind of like Alice in Wonderland, but only not really - where one can stay lost and write for three or four straight hours, which is what I’m doing now, actually; good coffee in plentiful amounts; you can smoke indoors, if that’s your bag; it’s mostly quiet, which conjures up all kinds of inspiration for me, for some unexplainable reason; and, if you want conversation, there’s no end to the types of people in here - liberals, straights, scene kids, old Cuban guys, hot girls, business professionals, young upstarts, band members, artists, the young and the bright, and the old and the wise - and those are just the people who have worked behind the counter in the three years that I’ve been coming here. Whoever sits at the tables, or on the patio outside, or gets their hair cut at the barber shop that operates out of this place (that’s right, a fucking barber shop) are all of those, and many, many more - all of them interesting, and most of them friendly. The food is good, too - just refer to the beginning of this rambling, mostly pointless tribute.
There’s always music on, and depending on who is controlling it that day, it mostly synchs to whatever mood I’m in, which is an extremely fortunate thing. Otherwise, it just sits on the edge between soothing and thoughtful - be it the best of Cuban jam bands, or Bob Dylan outtakes, or nameless, good soul music - it does much to the creative process.
I’ve lifted so many lyrics, and musical snippets, off of the things that attack my senses here. There’s a flat-screen television to my left, tuned to ESPN or TMC, blaring commercials or a college football game or some old film (indeed, one time, I watched an entire Lassie film here, for lack of anything else better to do); there’s knots of people, here and there, all around me, off on their own trips and leaving swirls of conversation in their wake; and the real world sits outside - a strip of 7th Avenue, reflecting the weather and whatever else is going on - attractive girls walk by, skaters, punks, bums, gaggles of bike-riders.
Even in my most illogical, moody, and disheveled times, I have always been welcome here. One time, I left in a hurry and thoughtlessly forgot to pay for all of the food and drink I had been scarfing - and simply paid the next time I saw them. That’s business - good business, trusting business, that relies on honesty from the customer and the staff. I’m sure if I did business here every other day, I could set up an account - that’s what kind of place it is. The owner, Don, is a hell of a nice guy - he's the kind of boss that wanders around the bar during the daytime, talking to random customers and having lunch with his buddies near the front windows, never losing sight of maintaining the ridiculously easy vibe within these walls, before going home and, I assume, watching sports and smoking cigars, among other things.
Every owner/boss should be like him - every place of business would be a groove to work with. And that’s a fact.

It’s totally nasty outside - windy and rainy and cold. I’m here in this warm haven, and just wrote - by hand - about 2,400 words in one sitting. I’m about to head home - for food, and a couch, and for book-reading and Wii-golf-watching with my friend Jeremy. I’m sure that I’ve popped through the three-hour parking time limit, which drives my parking garage fee to $3 - instead of $1. I might have worried about that a year ago, being so broke; but now it’s not too big of a deal. I even bought two drinks - a café con leche and a Coke - which I can pay for now - so on and so forth.
Honestly, though, I’m milking the last few moments I have in this place. The overhead lights have just dimmed, which is King Corona parlance for “Night is coming - the sun is setting - you might have to be somewhere here pretty soon.” Or, at least, that’s how I see it.
The bar has cleared out, for the most part; there’s one guy sitting there now, a professional-type waiting for his black-and-tan, or whatever he’s going to order and drink and enjoy. I would suggest the Guinness - it’s quite heavenly here. The Bass is also tasty. No beer for me, though - I’m about to kill this Coke, currently on its fourth refill - and the café con leche died a few hours ago.
But, indeed, the lights have dimmed and the house in Riverview is becoming more and more of a priority. A party of four, sitting to my left, are sipping wine and catching up on things - probably haven’t seen each other in a while - telling stories and such. There’s laughter - loud laughter - they’re gonna stew here for a while; their time is just beginning here - mine is rapidly coming to an end. You can feel when you’ve got to shove off from this place; you just know, in a weird display of psychic forethought - or usually, your back is hurting and your ass is numb - either way, something always lets you know.
You can’t ignore real life forever, sadly; you can’t stay here forever, more like, which is also sad. This is probably the one place where I can be in public and also be alone, with my ideas and such - a shut-in out in the open.
There could be one way of prolonging the magic - maybe I could just move in here - put a cot and an alarm clock upstairs, in between the kegs and old bits of wood and the rumored ghost that I’d have to share the place with - maybe a computer and a turntable too. I’ll have to talk to Don about that one of these days.
Living here would be pretty cool; or, I’d die after a week-long exposure to the vibes and words floating around downstairs, floating up through the floor in a choking fog. Something to consider. I wonder what Don would charge.

(Handwritten at King Corona Cigars [1523 East 7th Avenue, in beautiful Ybor City], over three-and-a-half hours on January 13th, 2009; typed and edited by the author the same evening.)

Gahh!

2009-01-10T20:13:00.000-08:00

Hey guys.

I'm back, for the moment.

I'm writing a blog as a way to chop up the tedium of editing pictures.

I mean, I *like* editing pictures - to a degree. But often, I just don't have the patience to sit and fuck with them for hours.

For instance, I have a photograph here that I personally think is brilliant. I was on N. 12th Street this afternoon, shooting stuff for the Tampa project, and I saw a car pull up near me and park. Two people got out, a very attractive girl and a cigarette-smoking guy. They locked the car and started walking towards Kennedy. I, meanwhile, got the Garry Winogrand inspiration, and, without raising the camera to my eye to frame the shot, released the shutter as they walked by.

The single frame I got of them is pretty good, I think. The problem is that its horribly tilted - probably because I didn't want to seem so creepy as to actually be *taking a picture* of this couple, so I just acted like I did it accidentally. The camera wasn't level, of course. This is proving to be a bitch to edit, purely because of my options - let me explain...

When I pull the shutter on the Nikon D60, I make ten million pixels happy. They get to soak up light, and color, and do the job they were created for. They rarely complain, and the only benefit they ask for is that their sensor - their home - is kept nice and dust-free. The sensor cleaner does this with ease, of course, providing safe, good working conditions for all ten million of those pixels. That's the short of how the camera works - ten million employees, or something like that.
Anyway, with TEN MILLION of those things working full-bore (except for two or three slackers - hot pixels - but that's a different story...), I have very, very clear total resolution. I could probably make prints up to 24" by 36" without losing detail, or having to blow the image up.
With that kind of resolution, I can do all kinds of cropping. My options have opened up - so much so, that I'm kind of drowning in them. The picture I referred to above - the one of the couple - can be anything it wants to be, basically. I can make it perfectly straight; I can also crop it almost any way I want to - and it would still be greatly clear, and quite sharp. That's ten million pixels for you.
But, I can't decide how to crop the damn thing. My options have become a trap - six months ago, I would have considered this picture trash, and would have regretted not holding the camera straight - all of that stuff. Now, I can *make it work* - and now that I have the option - the means to *make it work* - I'm stymied by it.

That's life, I guess.

Other than those problems, editing is pretty easy. I do a lot of pre-editing in the camera, on-site, in terms of deleting photos that obviously aren't going to work when I edit them for real. This gives me extra card space, and we all know how convenient that can be.
Editing can be monotonous, though - and that's why I'm writing this blog in the first place... to clear my head before I tackle this Winogrand-ish frame again. Working the fingers can do wonders for the brain, especially if you ramble.... Derek Taylor, ladies and gentlemen...

See ya'll later.

P.S. My top photo-editing music:

1. Charley Pride - She's Just an Old Love Turned Memory
2. the Beach Boys - Surfin' Sufari
3. Lightnin' Hopkins - Lightnin'
4. Avril Lavigne - anything.

A blog written at work

2008-12-03T19:55:00.000-08:00

* I wrote another blog before this one. It used the same Lyndon Johnson quote twice, with only two sentences separating them. I thought it was cool when I wrote it. Maybe I'll put it up one day.

Also: the Badassness Graph, as shown, did not have enough room to note "Carpet tacks" at .3, "Paul Tagliabue" at 19, or "McDonald's iced tea" at 23.

JFK

2008-11-22T10:23:00.000-08:00

I hate to sound old-man-ish here (picture me with a cane and old, weathered hat, iced tea in hand, sitting in a rocking chair on a Florida wrap-around porch if you must), but I remember the day I went into Mojo's (near University Mall) and was browsing through the records and, finding mounds of LPs that I wanted but were way out of my price range, resigned myself to looking through their dollar books. A couple looked interesting, but one volume stood out. (Again, with the old man-ish mannerisms). No really, what stood out to me was the bleakness of the dust jacket, and how terrifically old it looked.

I flipped through the pages quickly. Kennedy assassination? Sold! For one dollar, I figured it would be neat to have, even if the book wasn't good.

What awaited me inside its pages, though, was mesmerizing. With this book, William Manchester presented a factually-accurate recounting of five straight days - November 20th to the 25th, 1963. What could have been compacted into a chapter was, instead, filled out to six hundred and forty-seven pages - not counting the appendices.
This book doesn't tell the Kennedy assassination in the usual, worn-out way - that's what makes it a useful, and ultimately great, book. Usually, you get this: "President Kennedy lands at Love Field." (Insert stock footage of JFK and Jackie at Love Field). "The motorcade makes its way to downtown Dallas, and makes a sharp turn from Main Street to Elm Street. Continuing down Elm Street, President Kennedy is shot in the head. That Secret Service guy runs and jumps onto the back of the Lincoln. Mrs. Kennedy tries to collect shards of her husband's skull. They drive away. Isn't that fucked up?"
No, there's more story to it than that. People always forget the funeral, the magnificent national funeral that was held on the coming Monday. Why do they forget it? Because it's not bloody enough - or rather, people can't carve out conspiracy theories about a dead President's funeral. But I'll talk about that a little later.

The first time I read The Death of a President, I was so drawn into it. I think you would get it if you read it, as well. The part where the President is assassinated is the first in many climaxes in the text, and Manchester stops and, in italics, writes a truly heart-breaking account of that exact moment: Governor Connally screaming in agony, "gobs" of blood flying all over the car, bits of bone suspended in the air, the oppressive heat, and Jackie, springing to the back of the car, shouting to the sidewalk that her husband has been killed, collapses on the trunk of the car in defeat.
I read that part while I was at King Corona and I was in tears. My body was shaking as I, a student of the Kennedy assassination for a number of years, finally realized how momentous the assassination really was.

Share with me, for a moment, the assassination itself. What makes me sick are people who find it proper to scheme about the assassination of President Kennedy. I fucking hate the term "Grassy Knoll", I can't stand when people talk about the movie JFK like it's the gospel, and whenever someone has the gall to say that Oswald was a "patsy" because he stated so, it makes my skin crawl.
I've never seen JFK (and probably never will), but if I hear the term "back..... and to the left" one more time, I'm going to flip. Sure, I've never seen JFK, but here's another film that people love to pick apart, too.

If you've seen this, you don't have to see it again - you can rely on your memory. If you haven't, I reccommend that you watch it. It's gory. It's disturbing. We get to see a President killed in it. Most of all, though, it will make you realize one very important thing:

A man died out there.

Forget all that talk of second shooters, the Dal-Tex building, overpasses, and grassy knolls. Think about that sentence.

A man died out there.

A man with hopes, a man with aspirations. He had a family and a wife. He ran our country. He was elected to be our President. And he lived - he breathed. He had a temper and frustrations like the rest of us.

But wait.... did driver Bill Greer have a gun in his hand? I saw puffs of smoke above the fence on the Grassy Knoll. "Back, and to the left." There HAD to be a second shooter! Roof of the Dal-Tex building, maybe? Oswald was a hired hand. Jack Ruby was injected with cancer cells to make him die.

Fuck all that.

A man died out there.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

That sentiment also makes The Death of a President a great book. It largely concentrates on the people that the assassination affected, not the man who caused it. Oswald is given a few pages of background and, after that, mentioned only when he needs to be mentioned. This isn't a book that makes a huge deal about who, beyond a shadow of a doubt, killed President Kennedy. Manchester openly states that Oswald did it, and then moves on with the book. In this kind of narrative, it doesn't matter who killed the President.
In this book, however, you feel the grief and razor sadness of every person that admired Kennedy (and I mean everyone - there's so many names in here, you lose track eventually) and often in great detail. Some might call it depressing. I don't think so. Their stories are rarely heard, and it's a good thing that they were collected in one place, and woven into an all-encompassing narrative, before the memories were lost and all we heard, for the rest of time, was the click-click-click-buzzzzzzz of conspiracy theorists.

Read it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

One more note: Cecil Stoughton died only a few weeks ago. As official White House photographer, he went on the Dallas trip and ended up taking the famous pictures of LBJ being sworn in on Air Force One.

He was JFK's official photographer and was also the official photographer for half of Johnson's term. A huge collection of Kennedy photos, mostly taken by him, can be found here:

http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/JFK_Library_Photos

I have nothing but respect for Cecil Stoughton, for his capabilities as a photographer and a recordist of history. Rest in peace, buddy.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

RIP
John F. Kennedy
1917-1963

Something to chew on

2008-11-19T20:26:00.000-08:00

America's Next Top Model = unfair.

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

2008-10-31T21:10:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-26T20:44:00.001-07:00

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

2008-10-25T21:01:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-18T20:54:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-15T21:13:00.000-07:00

Would you trust this man?

Psych Major Syndrome

2008-10-13T18:43:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-10-11T20:04:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-09T19:47:00.000-07:00

(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

2008-10-05T18:22:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-05T11:54:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-04T23:22:00.001-07:00

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 -

2008-10-04T22:20:00.000-07:00

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.