smallutensils

i'm officially bidding livejournal adieu. i'll keep up with people by occasionally checking up on the friends feed, but postings are gonna come to an end most likely.



like i always say though: when god closes a door, the devil opens one (i have never said this in my life), and i'm attempting to maintain yet another blogger type thing over at picklesdickles.blogspot.com which is where i'm gonna be posting up records ripped from my collection of vinyl oddities, weird youtube videos, shit about comics, food, jokes, nudity, life... whatever. i'm doing the blog with a chick i work with, and if anyone is interested in getting in on it you should feel free to lemme know. the more people giving me shit about hwo i'm not posting the better, right?

as you can see by the mot recent post, i have much love for all y'all back home.

OH SNAP!

even the amazon review (in this case cribbed from the new yorker) is dubious.

"What's really propelling the movie is the vanity of its star (who is also one of the producers); at the end, Costner gives himself the most florid and protracted action-hero apotheosis since the conclusion of 'Shane.'"

i actually have fond memories of this flick. i went to see it with my dad when i was 14 or something, and was absolutely blown away with how awesome it was. of course, having seen hundreds of movies since then, this is kind of a stinking pile of dog turd now, but it's the funnest most expensive dog turd i can think of!

for all the money that was spent, which would you rather watch, titanic or waterworld. i'll take waterworld every (EVERY!) time.

looks like my livejournal account has become the place where i let everyone back in charlotte know that i'm coming home... and little else.

totally flying out of madison and landing in charlotte on dec 19th. i'll be in the northern carolina until january 9th, at which point i am gonna go visit a friend in ny for the weekend.

things i plan on doing while below the mason dixon:

landmarking the shit out of a friday night (dec 19th?)
sleeping on someone's couch in boone for at least one night, if not two
eating some bojangles biscuits
getting dinner at the penguin (fried pickles and a corndog)
gallery crawl in noda (if those aren't completely crappy)
watch the first alien movie with chase and jason (still haven't seen that sum bitch)
hit up both locations of the mint museum
and finally: see the old ghetto house

i'm sure there are other things i wanna do, but that's the list that pops into my head. and of course, if you're reading this, then you should partake in any/all of these events.

so, i'm trying the wordpress thing again for no real good reason. hit it up here and add it to whatever bookmarking system you might have going on inside of your computer. if you feel so inclined of course...

i just got done reading the very good "pussey!" (pronounced pooh-say) by the supremely talented (as well as supremely misanthropic) dan clowes, and it got me thinking back to the days of my childhood. the days i used to spend freaking out about spawn number one (which i paid a whopping eight bucks for, mind you) and boosting marvel masterworks card packs from wal-mart. thinking about those days led to this thought "what the hell ever happened to rob liefeld?" and a quick internet search brought me to his wikipedia page, which in turn passed me off to a list of "the 40 worst rob liefeld drawings."

i cannot believe that i used to (feebly) emulate his heavy handed use of pouches and his retardedly large space-age weaponry in the margins of my grade school notebook paper...

"Rob Liefeld is still getting commissioned to do work for both major comics publishers.  He is one of the most successful, recognizable, well-known and popular comic book artists in history despite being difficult to work with, egotistical, contrary and missing deadlines on a consistent basis.  He has made more money than most of us will ever see in our lifetimes.  He still cannot draw a foot."

 hell yeah they're making a "part-sequel, part-companion piece" to one of my favorite movies ever! i know that i've subjected lots of people to todd solondz's happiness as a means of offending them and making them squirm while i giggled with glee, but it's really really good beyond all that. yeah it's sad and disturbing and everything else you could call it, but at the end of the day, it's a great film, and i'm really looking forward to seeing where this strange continuation/companion thing goes.

my links are all effed up for whatever reason... i'll fix it soon. sorry for the inconvenience...

so the mad magazine/misfits shirt i posted a day or so ago was one that i had seen a picture of a long long time ago and spent many fruitless hours searching for again, and then i find it not once, but twice! the above t-shirt costs a completely retarded 45 bucks plus shipping (http://turntablelab.com/vinyl/217/1645/53805.html), but i just love the design. if anyone's thinking about my birthday or christmas, look no further. i wear a medium.

i just started a new job over at the wisconsin historical society working with their digital archives. my project for the immediate future is going to be cataloging the photographs produced by Charles Van Schaick between 1890 and 1910 that were used in the book Wisconsin Death Trip by Michael Lesy (1973). here's a link to a flickr set the WHS set up (http://www.flickr.com/photos/whsimages/sets/72157602476458793/). there was also a movie made about the Lesy book (http://www.wisconsindeathtrip.com/about.html), which is the only example i can think of where a collection of photography has been made into a film, much less one narrated by Bilbo Baggins himself...

overall, i'm pretty psyched about the new work, though it's helping to make my semester pretty busy.

i'm not a super-fan of xkcd but this is pretty much where i'm at right about now, thanks to a trojan which put windows on lock down for me.

deepdiscount had a super awesome buy one get one free sale for a few weeks on almost all of their criterion dvds, and me being the sort of person who can never refuse a great deal such as that, i made many times with the add to cart clicky. here's what i got (in order of criterion spine number cause i'm nerdy like that):

brazil (terry gilliam)
videodrome (david cronenberg)
tanner '88 (robert altman)
f for fake (orson welles)
dazed & confused (richard linklater)
wr: mysteries of the organism (dušan makavejev)
sweet movie (dušan makavejev)
the milky way (luis buñuel)
mishima: a life in 4 chapters (paul schrader)

so far i've managed to watch sweet movie, the milky way and as of tonight, mishima. i sincerely have yet to be let down. i was completely blown away by both the milky way and mishima, and sweet movie was really interesting in that it was a gorgeous film, but i'm still wrapping my mind around the ideological controversies it's managed to stir up since it was released. the bonus features for me are almost always as interesting as the films themselves. for example the mishima dvd had two separate documentaries about the production of the film, as well as a full bbc documentary from the 80s about the life of mishima. the booklets are insightful, as the one from the milky way will attest, boasting two essays written by buñuel biographer and a novelist friend present at the first screening, as well as an interview with buñuel himself. the sweet movie disc includes little of the controversy that i've managed to dredge up from the far corners of the internet, but does a good job of putting the film in its historical context, which is pretty necessary given it's allegorical symbolism (is that the sound of a chris talking out of his ass?). the icing on the cake  is that all of this is wrapped up in superbly designed covers. i'm far from the first to sing the praises of criterion, and certainly not the last. check em out if you haven't.

i remember hearing about this french fella at garr memorial church (non denominational), which was where my family attended services while i was a youngster. there was a clown-like puppeteer dude (you know the type) who came and performed for the sunday school and talked about how philippe petit crossed niagra falls something like 5 times on a tight rope (i can't remember how the jester-person tied it into god-stuff, but that's not the point), doing insane stuff each time and going so far as to carry a guy across in a wheel barrow even. something about him has nestled its way into my imagination and has stayed there ever since. needless to say, i'm looking to check this out as soon as possible.

ok, so the youtube link is kinda wack, so check out a working trailer here.

i'm not the type of dude who reads adbusters regularly. they always come off as a bit too preachy to me, though i admit to fantasizing about subscribing in my younger, more impressionable, and more liberal days spent acquiring a liberal studies degree. still, on occasion i am prone to picking up a copy to see what they're jabbering about these days from their bunkers in seattle and portland, as well as to admire their impeccably designed (and overpriced) magazine. yesterday morning was such a day, and i found their cover story on so-called "hipsters" very interesting, if a bit ham handed and superficial.

some choice quotes:

"An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning... While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the “hipster” – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society."

"'These hipster zombies… are the idols of the style pages, the darlings of viral marketers and the marks of predatory real-estate agents,' wrote Christian Lorentzen in a Time Out New York article entitled ‘Why the Hipster Must Die.’ 'And they must be buried for cool to be reborn.'"

"Most critics make a point of attacking the hipster’s lack of individuality, but it is this stubborn obfuscation that distinguishes them from their predecessors, while allowing hipsterdom to easily blend in and mutate other social movements, sub-cultures and lifestyles."

"Hipsterdom is the first “counterculture” to be born under the advertising industry’s microscope, leaving it open to constant manipulation but also forcing its participants to continually shift their interests and affiliations. Less a subculture, the hipster is a consumer group – using their capital to purchase empty authenticity and rebellion. But the moment a trend, band, sound, style or feeling gains too much exposure, it is suddenly looked upon with disdain. Hipsters cannot afford to maintain any cultural loyalties or affiliations for fear they will lose relevance."

"We are a lost generation, desperately clinging to anything that feels real, but too afraid to become it ourselves. We are a defeated generation, resigned to the hypocrisy of those before us, who once sang songs of rebellion and now sell them back to us. We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new." (this was the ham handed part, but not entirely off the mark despite its dramaticism in my opinion)

boone had some hipsters, and so did charlotte, but i have a hard time associating them with what i'm reading here. i see this article speaking much more to the hipsters (honestly, such an awkward word, i can't blame anyone for not wanting to be associated with it) that i have encountered here in madison. there's a magnificent "cult of the fixie" on parade every day, as well as a complete adoption of 80s kitsch that i can only associate with the adoption of hippie gear (bell bottoms, flowery shirts, beatles records) around the time i was coming of age... my undergrad wasn't like the undergrad experience i see flowering around me in solid colored american apparel hoodies all around me, which makes me feel like the old man on the block who likes the same music, likes the same bars, finds the younger hip ladies cute... makes me feel all around culturally lecherous.

i know that i, myself, am implicated pretty thoroughly in this whole hipster thing, and i freely admit to having a couple of years of vice back issues sitting on my desk right now, and i've recently bought a few pairs of tighter-by-comparison-to-what-i-used-to-wear jeans and i am under the impression that medium sized shirts actually look ok on me, but (and maybe this implicates me even more) i'm so thoroughly critical of the lack of sincerity that seems to follow this sub-culture around wherever it goes.

thinking about this article today, i realized that it sounds a lot like the DA convention from fear and loathing in las vegas ("A dope fiend refers to the reefer butt as a roach, because, it resembles a cockroach." "...but what I can say is that if Margaret Mead, at her age, smoked grass... she'd have one hell of a trip!"). the article does manages to make some relevant points about hipster culture within this age and time, but still manages to come across as having not really understood the subject at all: an older person, writing about those wacky young people, for older people.

i'm rambling a lot, but this whole hipster thing, while being completely superfluous to real life and everything, has been a topic i've taken a special interest in for a while now. i feel like i came of age during that strange fluctuating period between generation x, and this hipster, millennial, whatever you wanna call it, which leaves me somewhat without a sense of cultural identity. i'm not trying to cry a river over this (cultural identities are overrated), just thought i'd throw it out there.

there's not much of a conclusion for me on this, just the fact that i read an interesting article and thought i'd pass along some of the more interesting points and add my own colorful if half-cocked commentary.

"Abdullah's primary claim to fame, of course, is as a professional wrestler with a reputation as a bloodthirsty brute.  In the ring, Abdullah was known for his maniacal habit of using a fork to carve into his opponents' foreheads."

i've never been professional wrestling superfan number one, but damn if this doesn't make me wanna plot a trip to georgia right the hell about now... ribs are always on those all you can eat chinese buffets, but to straight up say that they're part of the soul of your chinese restaurant? i'm so in it hurts.

from the WFMU blog.

it's time to clear the dust and cobwebs off of the celebratoy wreaths, cause i am officially coming home!

my flight arrives at 12:30am on thursday night / friday morning (taking the red-eye for the cheapness) on friday july 17th, and i'll be in charlotte till about 4 pm on tuesday july 22nd.

hopefully i can squeeze in a trip to boone for a night, but we'll just have to see about that, given my lack of an automobile.

this looks to be a really interesting documentary. while african music isn't my steez as far as records i know and look for and whatnot, i'm always down with someone passionately tracking down records they dig (HA!). so there you go. check it out if you wanna.