This Week in Dylan

All the news that’s fit to post….

Another week with very little excitement. More downloaded music (including one of my new favorites, Cellar Door, by John Vanderslice, as well as a lot of stuff I already had on vinyl). A little tinkering in Pure Data (making some fun little random note-generating ambient noise, another baby-step or two ahead of what I’d already made). A little tinkering in Buzz, including some progress on the re-write of “Car Commercial” (which now has a nice Rhodes piano part filling out the choruses). I’ve got a little acoustic guitar based ditty I’m working on fleshing out. And I have an idea for my long-delayed redesign/move to Movable Type, but I haven’t actually started roughing it out. Maybe tonight. Maybe not. I feel pretty shitty today, so I’m guessing I might just end up doing a whole lot of nothing this evening.

Too many projects, not enough motivation.

i got the dreaded call from Comp USA that I was half-expecting…”We don’t really understand what’s wrong with your soundcard.” Sigh…I had to explain it in little words, and I think it got through, but I’m not sure. I keep thinking I’ll be getting a call telling me it’s fixed, and I’ll go get it and it won’t be. Or they’ll tell me no, it works fine, they don’t know what I’m talking about. Which will be unacceptable, of course. But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Leaving the royal “we” aside now…Reed will be back in town tomorrow night sometime. So that must mean we’ll be partying on Wednesday! I kid, I kid. Sort of. But it’ll be nice to see him again, and get the full scoop on his trip.

Note to self: four weeks, with that one exception, as of Saturday. Hmm…

Anyhow. More later…

New Music!

There’s a new song up at EM411.com. Another remastered older song, from back int he Car Stereo Destroys Michael Bolton Tape days, titled “Send Back By Teletype”.

At this point, I feel like I’m working on 3 separate “themes” in my music….I’ve got the Shirt/Pants/Sneakers & Socks songs, which are poppy, sort of hip-hoppy little songs…..then I’ve got some mellower songs, like Slender Wrists, and two others that are in progress, and then there’s Pushpin Revolution, Send Back By Teletype, and a couple of other hyper lo-fi pop tunes, I guess. We’ll see how all these pieces come together….

More later….

Eternal Sunshine

I’ve been excited about this movie for about as long as I’ve known about it. Charlie Kaufman, Michel Gondry, a serious Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Elijah Wood, Mark Ruffalo….How much better can it get? Answer: not much. The story was incredible, the visual style was brilliant, the performances were excellent, the music was beautiful. I don’t think there was anything in this movie that didn’t work for me. I’m trying to find the soundtrack on Soulseek right now, mainly for the new Beck song from the ending. His voice is just getting better and more assured with every release, and this one is so moody and memorable.

The premise behind the movie (that there is a pseudo-medical procedure that can erase the memory of certain people or events from your mind, while leaving the rest of your memories intact) ties in really well with the book I just finished, Godel, Escher & Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. The book deals a lot with the various levels of abstraction in the brain, and how the “mind” relates to the brain’s physical substrate of neurons and electrical charges. There is some consideration of how concepts and memories in our mind relate to the physical structures of the brain itself….like, can you point to a specific neuron, or group of neurons, and say “this neuron here represents this specific memory or idea”? food for thought, about thought.

Anyways….so Cerebus is over. I haven’t been following the series since Guys, several years ago, so I’ve missed almost the entire final third of the series, but the ending still struck me as oddly appropriate. It’s somewhat open to interpretation, I suppose, but it does seem to relate to the general themes that have consumed Dave Sim lately.

I’ve also finally managed to pick up THB #4, and a handful of the Maxx issues I was missing. I still need THB #2, and the Maxx #’s 29, 30, and 35, to have both complete series’. But I’m much closer!

Looks like band practice is happening later today. Once Joey gets back from rehearsal, it’ll be time to rock out. We don’t do this often enough. Ah well….we do what we can.

More later….

Still Busy Busy….

Work has been insanely hectic lately, and when I get home, I just want to relaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaax, and not get anything done. But eventually, my restless nature gets the best of me, and I dive into some project or other. I got some of my old Buzz stuff polished up a little bit, and even released a new song (well, a cleaned up old song) at my EMpage. “Shirt” and “Pants” are part of the EP project I alluded to earlier….do you detect a theme emerging?

I love my Shure PG81 condenser mic….I was messing around and recording my acoustic guitar last night, and it sounds soooo nice. Such an improvement on the dynamic mics I’d been using. Seems like dynamic mics on acoustic instruments always end up sounding sort of muffled, or dead, but this mic has a nice clean high end that brings out the sparkle of a nice acoustic sound. Once I get my clarinet range back (I’ve been practicing, a little bit), I’ll try recording some of that TOO. I picked up some #2 and #2 1/2 reeds at Zone Music, and discovered the my clarinet chops are GONE. I have a total range of about 9 semi-tones, similar to when I was just starting. So I’m going to try to work out my embouchure and get back in the clarinet habit. I still have my manual dexterity, and my fingerings are still there, so it’s just a matter of working out the lips again.

I can’t wait until Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I’m counting the days.

More later….

Busy Busy…

I’ve got all sorts of stuff going on….I’m working on a Buzz documentation project with some of the kids from EM411.com, and we’ve got a decent start, but it’s going to be pretty long term. Then I’ve got all sorts of comics to read. I’m making my way through all the stuff I’ve got from APE…so far I’ve finished reading Optic Nerve #1-9, a few of the Snake Pit comics, Flies on the Ceiling, Love & Rockets #7, and Giant THB. I’ve decided to re-read Church & State I before tackling part 2, which makes sense since I just finished High Society recently. I’ll probably save Quimby the Mouse for last, and read the self-publishing guide whenever I get around to it. I also just pick up Peanut Butter and Jeremy’s Best Book Ever, which was a quick, fun read.

Then, of course, there’s Drama Club material to work on with Joey (we still haven’t finished Josephine, although we’re getting a little farther). And some solo music that I’m sort of kicking around on the back burner.

And there’s potentially some lingering personal matters that may be getting cleared up soon….I hope. But that’s a whole other issue….

Anyways. More later….

War-walking

So we only got a few pics snapped last night, because the light wasn’t really on our side in Joey’s garage. But we did run through our songs really well, “Paying Dues” was especially rocking. I love that song. And we made a lot of progress on “Josephine”, though we didn’t even touch the sequencing side of things.

But after we were done playing, we went “war-walking” around Joey’s neighborhood with my laptop and Wifi card. We managed to connect to three different wireless networks in the area, but couldn’t pin down exactly where they were. I think we were just on the cusp of them, because reception was pretty spotty. We were able to connect to all of them, and actually managed to surf around for a while on one, but the connection was pretty intermittent, depending on where we were. This might merit further investigation. Hmmm….

More later….

Megapixels!!

Whoooo. Band practice tonight. And since I have a limited-time access to a brand-new 5.3 mp digital camera with manual focus and macro, we’ll be taking some pictures, possibly to use as future Drama Club promo pics. A little early for worrying about promoting a band with only 3 full songs and a bunch of fragments, but they’ll come in handy. And besides….ONE DAY ONLY! The camera will go back from whence it came on Saturday.

First Quarter Productivity is Up

Yeah, I actually feel like I got some things accomplished this weekend. First, I gave myself a deadline project to complete, and ended up with a new song. Not bad for 8 hours of work, including a dinner break.

Joey and I did some practicing on Sunday, and got some nice guitar/vocal stuff happening on Josephine, but we were distracted by Glengarry Glen Ross on IFC, and Our Fearless Leader on Meet the Press, and didn’t get as much sequencing done as we’d hoped. But we have a decent outline to start from at least. Rawk.

Oh, and a bunch of us hit Japantown on Saturday, and had Japanese food and Gelato crepes. Aww yeah. We were thinking of maybe hitting up Amoeba afterwards, but nobody was really feeling it, and my wallet didn’t need that kind of abuse at the moment, so it’s all for the better.

Goal for this week: finish sequencing Josephine by Sunday. Write my Comics: Week in Review “column” tonight. Make a bazillion dollars. I’ll give myself until next week on that one, just in case.

More later….

Out From Under the Weather

I’ve been under the weather for a while here, and I kind of slacked out on my already irregular blogging schedule. I would’ve been blogging about sitting in front of the TV drinking Thera-Flu anyways, so you didn’t miss much. I’ve still got a nagging cough, but I’m doing much better now.

Christmas came and went. My big prize gift was a Shure PG81 condenser mic (woo-hoo!). I also got a lot of good clothes, some music (Aphex Twin and the Velvet Underground), and some comics (I bought myself Otomo’s Domu, and so did Emily, so we swapped the second copy for Daniel Clowes’ David Boring).

Oh, Joey and I have a name now. We’re the Drama Club. Yes, it’s kinda cheesy, but it’s the best name that’s actually stuck so far. If it sticks for a while longer, maybe we’ll get a domain hookup.

Anyways…12 days til Japan. It seems so much farther away, but I’m sure it’ll be here in no time. I’m still figuring out what I need to pack. I know for sure I’ll be bringing my laptop, both my cameras, and some clothes and books. I don’t know what else I’ll need though…passport/wallet/etc, toiletries, obviously. That should do though, I think. I was thinking about getting myself an iPod, but the more I think about it, the more I’m inclined to get an mp3 CD player instead, and spend the rest of the money on mics. We’ll see…

More later….

L33tT H4XX0R in training.

I’m now the proud owner of a Linux box. Over the weekend, I converted my old PII 300 from Windows XP Pro to Mandrake 9.2. It’s been rewarding and frustrating….The first thing I tried to do is get my new box on my local network, and after a lot of hairpulling and back-and-forth, I managed to get it working in one direction (pulling files from my XP laptop onto my Mandrake box). Now I just need to get it set up to share files both ways. I also found out that my broken-monitored laptop doesn’t want to play with my other computers on the network for some reason, but that’s a story for another day….

Still too early to make any sort of comparisons between OSes, since I’m still just learning how to navigate and operate in the Linux environment. It’s interesting learning a new perspective on file management and system configuration and all that fun stuff, after being used to the Windows and MacOS paradigm for so long…there’s a lot of assumptions about how the desktop/computer metaphor works that just seemed “natural” to me because it was how I learned. Fun stuff…definitely frustrating at times.

I’m so sick of this design now….something needs to be done around here. Which means I need to find some time to do a layout. Ack….

Did I mention this here already? I’ll be in Japan for 9 days in January. I’m going with Emily, to visit her friend Robert for a while. We’ll be staying at his host family’s guest house, outside of Tokyo. I’m excited already….I’m trying to figure out what I need to bring with me. Hopefully, I’ll be able to post while I’m there, but I don’t know what the internet situation is. There’s access of some sort available, because Robert and Emily e-mail regularly, so we’ll see. If not, I’ll just write while I’m there and post everything when I get back. Expect pictures, too. I’m planning on bringing my digital camera for snapshots, and my SLR with color and B&W film. Rawk!

Joey and I are planning to do another Open Mic tomorrow night (our third so far). We’re making progress pretty regularly. Our next songs to tackle are the old Superficial Hero tunes “Car Commercial” and “Josephine.” I’ve already got about half of the first one programmed, I just need to finish that and teach Joey his parts.

More later…