This blog is closed… For now at least

If you need me, I’ve been hanging out over on Tumblr lately…

AV Club Undercover Round 1 – Favs

I’m always in the market for a good cover song, so as the AV Club gets rolling in their second round of great covers I thought I’d look back at my three favorites from Round 1.

and for some stupid reason “Embedding disabled by request” for The Clientele covering Paper Planes: http://youtu.be/DyMYuOZazUI

I really can’t understand why any video would ever want to have embedding disabled. Seems antithetical to our nutty modern times and stuff…. But what do I know?

MPLS Songs / Sick of Winter

Like many Twin Citians, I’ve been pretty miserable lately, waiting for Winter to release us from its super strong kung fu grip.  Thankfully, relief appears to finally be on the way. 

And we’re referenced in a bunch of cool songs!  So we got that going for us…

Tom Waits – Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis

That Dog – Minneapolis

The Dictators – Minnesota Strip (ok, this one is actually about my old neighborhood in NYC way back before my time)

The Hold Steady – Stuck Between Stations

Husker Du – Love Is All Around/Mary Tyler Moore

Atmosphere – Shhh

Seriously though, I need to move somewhere warm…

Happy Mardi Gras!

I only lived in New Orleans for one incredible year and have been thinking about moving back since the day I left. Just hasn’t been in the cards so far… My first and only Mardi Gras ranks among the highest highlights of that singular year.

mardi gras, posted with vodpod

Be sure to check the Parade Cam throughout the day

This is just a really good cover: I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine

I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine – Dirty Projectors

I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine – Bob Dylan

Right?

Waitress on the Mountain of Love in the Sky

Some songs kinda sound alike…

Johnny Rivers

 

The Replacements

 

Just sayin’…

10,000 Views

This photo of mine recently passed the 10,000 view mark on Flickr, easily my most viewed image since I started using the service a few years ago.

Lots of people searching for “hug” I guess.  At least that’s what Flickr’s stats are telling me.  Wonder how many views it would have with a different name?  The power of SEO I guess…

In any case, my second most viewed photo on Flickr has only wracked up a measly 2,063 as of today.

Happy Mondays love Mystery Train, I guess?

Decided I needed a short break from watching the fascinating  Al Jazeera coverage of this whole Egypt thing (Have you guys been watching this?  You should be watching this.)  It’s even been added to Roku!

In any case, I flipped away from the Roku for a minute and landed on thecooltv, which was playing some odd looking Happy Mondays video that paid homage to the great Jim Jarmusch picture, Mystery Train

Specifically around the 3 minute mark — the lipstick scene –

hmmm, ok.

Who knew?

Ettinauer 226XL or Camerahead?

I recently watched Albert Brooks’ writer/director debut Real Life.  It’s basically a meta take on Reality TV before there really was any Reality TV.

Made in the late 70′s, it can feel a bit dated now, in the same way that The Social Network will probably feel dated in 30 years…  You know, because of technology and culture always morphing and changing and moving forward and stuff like that…

In any case, the funniest gag in the whole movie is actually a direct result of the era in which it came (the pre-awesome-little-video-cameras era).  The camera crew wears these hilarious looking camera helmet hybrid things… With microphones right where your ears go!  Technically the device is called the Ettinauer 226XL, but I prefer Cameraheads.

Not only do these Cameraheads document the action, but they are also part of the story within the story within the story….  They pop in and out of shots and eventually, one Camerahead even becomes a therapist of sorts for Brooks during a moment of crisis.

Good stuff.

You’re a Genius all the time

I’ve been hitting a wall over & over on the script I’m working on, so I spent a little time this morning browsing my bookshelf for a little inspiration… or something.

What I found was this little nugget from Jack Kerouac

Belief & Technique for Modern Prose

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Don’t think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You’re a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

Thanks for the tips Jack!  You too Johnny Depp!(?)