Oh say, say,say, oh say, say, say

After Thanksgiving dinner, my sister and I played Rock Band for a bit. She has absolutely no rhythm (I don't either, but I'm getting better at it). I started her out singing because that seemed to be the easiest- you don't have to follow color-coated bars on the screen, just sing the words that come across. Except, she completely ignored the the genre of music known as 'rock' for all her life and doesn't know ANY of the songs in Rock Band. So she's literally saying the words in a monotonous voice. It was horrid, I wanted to throw my guitar (controller, lol) across the room at some points it sounded so bad.

She really wanted to try drums and she was ok at it on easy. At one points, I forget which song, she actually kept the beat for like 10 seconds, and we were playing in sync, and you can hear it. My mom, who was reading a chinese newspaper also heard it, and looked up at us and then carried on reading the newspaper. For those 10 seconds, we were a ROCK BAND.

I'm getting ok at the drums now. The base pedal is going to rip me a new one on harder songs though, but it's really fun and "I'm almost actually playing the song!". Maps by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs is REALLY FUN to play on drums because it has a really good drum line.

I wish I knew some people who were at least semi decent at music rhythm games (Ray excluded) because when it all comes together and all 4 people are playing in sync and on beat, it's magical.

Black Friday stuff

Oh man, I totally forgot about black Friday deals when I wrote the last post. I just saw all the leaked black Friday ads and there is almost nothing I want so that's good at least. A part of me feels really disappointed though. This year's black Friday sales are the most lacking in the last few years, easily. Well, I'm glad I won't have to get up at 5am and line up at some store in the cold to get shit this year.

I'll probably post photo's of all the crap I buy in the next two months to see how my spending habits play out. I'm picking up Mario tomorrow. Toys R Us is giving away $25 giftcards with purchase, which is INSANE. So the $25 will help towards the purchase of...another game from my last post.

So, So Broke

Oh god. This month:


$50 11/12


$60 11/13


$60 11/20


$40 11/20


$170 11/20

Total: $380

Ok, I'm obviously not going to buy all this crap this month. Fuck. I hope I don't. I'm only getting Rock Band (being overnighted to me from Amazon) and Super Mario Galaxy for sure. The rest can be holiday presents. *wink

Gaming hasn't been this exciting since 1998.

/geek

That Didn't Last Long. At All.

Well, my blackout didn't last long. This is stupid, it lasted for like 2 days. Didn't even get past the first weekend. I gotta stop being so nice.

But it still feels shitty to be dropped like Britney Spears drops babies =(

For the worst thing of all too. Fuck people with no loyalty.

Life

I haven't been updating this blog as much anymore. The reason there are less posts is because I'm trying to get away from righting about everyday life and shit I'm doing with people.

Some stuff from the last month (extremely abridged)

-There's always some movie/music video/photo shoot happening in DUMBO. Literally every day some shit is going on. A few weeks ago a movie was being shot. I was walking to the bar with some co-workers and telling them how I never spot celebrities even if they walk right by me. I was telling them about the time I saw Natalie Portman. As I'm telling them this, Antonio Bandaris walks by us and "brushes up against me" and I didn't notice. Morgan Freeman was also spotted. I didn't pay attention to either.

-Alex was in town a few weeks ago. We went to Union Pool.

-Colleen, Adam, and Cassidy was here last week. We went to Union Pool.

-Kevon and I was supposed to go to Union Pool last night but it was too chilly.

-Spotted: L Magazine in Gossip Girl, for a split second. The Fiction Issue!

-There's a blackout coming soon.

ROCK BAND!!

I was around 23rd and 6th this afternoon to take a photo of the window dispaly of Brian Oglesbee's photos from his new book Aquatique. The one of Colleen was in the window and she wanted me to take a photo of it for her. I think the one of Kate is also in the book.

After that I went to Best Buy across the street to browse and to my suprise, they had a Rock Band demo set up with the guitars, drums and mic. No one wanted to sing in Best Buy so it wasn't even touched. But OMG, I tried the drums and guitar a few times and you don't even know how excited I am for this game. Drumming is sooo much fun.

The songs you can play (not counting the unlockables)-
list courtesy of ign.com

1960s

• Rolling Stones "Gimme Shelter"

1970s

• Aerosmith "Train Kept a Rollin'"*
• The Who "Won't Get Fooled Again"
• Boston "Foreplay/Long Time"
• Mountain "Mississippi Queen" (cover)
• The Police "Next to You"
• David Bowie "Suffragette City"
• Black Sabbath "Paranoid" (cover)
• Blue Oyster Cult "Don't Fear the Reaper"
• The Ramones "Blitzkrieg Bop"
• Deep Purple "Highway Star"
• KISS "Detroit Rock City"
• Molly Hatchet "Flirtin' With Disaster"
• The Outlaws "Green Grass & High Tides" (cover)
• Sweet "Ballroom Blitz" (cover)

1980s

• Rush "Tom Sawyer"*
• Bon Jovi "Wanted Dead or Alive"
• The Clash "Should I Stay or Should I Go"
• Faith No More "Epic"
• Pixies "Wave of Mutilation"
• R.E.M. "Orange Crush"
• Iron Maiden "Run to the Hills" (cover)

1990s

• Foo Fighters "Learn to Fly"
• Metallica "Enter Sandman"
• Nirvana "In Bloom"
• Stone Temple Pilots "Vasoline"
• Weezer "Say It Ain't So"
• Smashing Pumpkins "Cherub Rock"
• Radiohead "Creep"
• Beastie Boys "Sabotage"
• Hole "Celebrity Skin"
• Garbage "I Think I'm Paranoid"
• Soundgarden "Black Hole Sun"

2000s

• The Hives "Main Offender"
• Queens of the Stone Age "Go With the Flow"
• The Strokes "Reptilia"
• Jet "Are You Gonna Be My Girl"
• OK Go "Here It Goes Again"
• Nine Inch Nails "The Hand That Feeds"
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Maps"
• Red Hot Chili Peppers "Dani California"
• Coheed & Cambria "Welcome Home"
• Fallout Boy "Dead on Arrival"
• The Killers "When You Were Young"
• New Pornographers "Electric Version"

The New Pornographers!!!

Look for my Rock Band party on black friday invite soon. My Rock Band band is going to be called BLACK FOR ASSOCIATION. Oh yeah.

Pane alla olive

For the upcoming Food and Drink issue. We didn't end up using this version in the mag, but I still like it. Cover shot coming soon.

Falls Apart

Deterioration, digital print, 2006

I feel like I should continue making my prints. The time now is as relevant as it was back then. The vicious cycle of change never ends.

Sharon's Wedding

Went to a wedding on Saturday night for my mom's friend's daughter Sharon. It was in freaking Flushing. Why? I don't know. All their relatives and friends live in Brooklyn... The grass is greener.



Tea Ceremony! She's wearing a Chinese wedding dress. Same as Michelle did at hers. It's the same dress. My mom was the tea handler person. I don't know what you'd call that in English. She's the one standing in the middle holding the tray.



Games are often played at Chinese weddings. They are playing what is, essentially Marco Polo here. The bride and gloom has to find each other.



There are also a few other games, that they didn't play. They can get pretty elaborate. I remember when I was a young lad attending a wedding in Chinatown. The only game I can remember from that involved a blindfolded gloom trying to grab boiled eggs from the bride's leg. Or something.

They had an open bar. That was the first thing my sister and I did. I had 4 rum and cokes throughout the night, but didn't even get really that tipsy. I had 2 before we started to eat. I guess the food negated it.


Cheers.

A few more photos at my flickr.

New Photos of Sus

2 weeks ago I had a photo shoot with Sus in her apartment. After viewing some of these, I realize that sometimes it takes me a while to really "see" a photo and its merits. I had converted a few of these but didn't upload them till today. After the initial impression, I didn't look at them for a week, then I came back to them and was pleasantly surprised at what I had. Some photos are like wine, they get better with age. Or at least, you start to see things in certain photos that you don't see at first glance.





This one reminds me of a classical 1/3rd view (is that even the correct term?) portrait.


This one was a study for a long term project idea I have. We tried a few in this pose, but the lens distorts Sus's legs and make them look un-proportionally long. I gotta figure out how to fix that. That's what this study is for.

A few more photos at my flickr.

For the Bitches That Come Over for Haloz

I'm so getting pink controllers.

Weekend Update 10/1/07

-I was having coffee with Heather at Joe's this weekend and a (cute) girl walked in with a big-ass cassette tape player strapped to her right butt pocket. It was awesome. This was one of those things where the person is rocking it so nonchalantly that it works, not in a douchey trying too hard to be cool kind of way either.

-Went out in Dumbo this weekend. It was really strange because I'm there all the time now and not use to seeing it in such a perspective. 68 Jay was bustling! The DUMBO arts festival was going on too. Apparently there's an artist in a side room right next to my office...we went around looking for random art parties to crash, but we went a bit too late. Everything was kicked.

-Saw Andrew Eridos sitting outside of the place I get coffee from in the mornings at 1AM in the morning...

B and S

I can't believe I just watched Gossip Girl. I can't believe my co-workers are so into it either. Croissants!

Whole Bunch of Stuff

It's 1:18AM and I'm still at the L office closing the next issue. Sometimes there are blocks of time when I have nothing to do. I like to look around all the boxes full of stuff thats at the front of the office, which are all pretty much up for grabs.

We have a lot of useless crap relating to the crappy Dane Cook vehicle Good Luck Chuck right now from a recent promo. Size L t-shirts, a huge ball of lanyards, small posters, and an entire box of mostly unhanded out postcards which all have Good Luck Chuck stamped on it in some form.

We also have a box of Volkswagon branded lip blam left over from Summerscreen. That's going to be useful with the upcoming weather. That's everything that's interesting. We still have a bunch of L branded t-shirts, which are quality I might add.

People Still Lining Up for Wii

I was at Best Buy this morning to buy [something] and they had advertised that they would have Wiis in stock today so there was a line of about 30-50 people before the store opened up at 11AM.

I can't believe people are still lining up for one. It's really quite amazing on Nintendo's part on marketing, but not so amazing on keeping up with stock. It's going on 10 months and it's still not regularly in stock.

So Best Buy opened the store and everyone started running to the videogames section. I just shook my head and went around to the other guy at the videogame section. "What you looking for, a Wii?" he asked me. "No, I have one. Do you have the Halo Xb0x?". I went to the Xbox section, picked up the fricken 30 pound (slight exaggeration, but not by much) box and went to the cash register. Done.

Free Beer, Lots of it.

On Friday, the 2nd annual Brewfest took place at South Street Seaport. It's basically the biggest excuse to get drunk ever in NY. Pretty much most of the microbreweries around NY state come and set up tables for tasting.

Tickets are $45, but I got in for free. My job gives me perks like that. That is like the most amazing thing ever. Every time I think about it. Beer? Microbreweries? unlimited FREE? OMG.

They gave everyone a 4oz shot glass at the gate for you to use. After about an hour, you'd hear the occasional glass breaking on the floor, and everyone would go "OOOOOOOOOOOOOOh". When you're drunk with 5000 other people around that are also drunk on a seemingly unending supply of beer it's alllllllright.

I must have tried at least 25 different beers. That probably was only 30% of what was available. The festival was supposed to be from 5-11pm, but around 8pm, everyone started to run out of beer. By 9pm, it was pretty much kicked.

I went with Ray and we told Kevon to just come. It's in a public space, which is also pretty amazing in itself- that the city allowed this to happen on the pier. There are no barriers set up, anyone could just walk around the seaport. We could have easily just gotten beers with our glasses and poured them into a cup for someone, or just drink and get more. Brewfest is like the best thing ever the more I think about it.

Next year, we're telling everyone to come because it's so easy to get beer. I don't think they changed the glass design from last year either, so I'm just going to bring it back and let someone else use it. So great, so glorious!

MGS4

Holy Shit.

This Beer is Now $6 Dollars

I saw Feist at McCarren Park Pool last Wednesday and the first thing I did when I got inside was go buy a ticket for beer. Getting beer at the pool is a three step process. You have to show ID, get in the line to buy a ticket that you can redeem for a beer and then get in another line to actually get beer. They must have done a ton of research and analysis on what the most efficient way to sell beer was.

Anyway, at the Blond Redhead show, the beer (which is all Brooklyn btw) was 5 dollars. When we got up to the ticket line, I noticed a really haphazardly '6' in written over the '5'. Someone had taken a sharpie and turned the '5' into a '6'. You can imagine they only made the bottom half of the '5' into a circle to look like a '6'. They didn't even try that hard, as it was very obvious they had jacked the price up. I guess they felt like they could get away with it. What, being the end of summer and all. Right? Actually, I don't know why, all I know is that I didn't tip the them because of this.

I Take it Back

This is the best movie ever. The Shanghi Kid (apparently, that's what it's going to be called now). It's not even out yet. It's in post production. I have no clue when it's going to be in theaters.

Fuck You "Shanghi Kiss" Movie.

Ok, bad enough that it's Saturday night and all my plans have fallen through and I'm here in my house alone. So I grab a beer and now I'm watching this movie called Shanghi Kiss.

I'm three minutes into and and I had to pause and blog this immediately. This is what has happened so far at 3 minutes- the main character, a Chinese guy (who's just decent looking) gets on a public bus in LA. He is sitting across a hot blond girl,who's sketching him, and she says to him "don't be sad" (I guess he looked sad). He's taking the bus because his car has been towed. So she starts to sing him a song and then sits next to him. Then she asks him out to coffee and he's all "I don't think that's such a good idea" and she's like, "what if I'm the one?"

That's when I paused it. This shit is the most highly unpalatable scenario for a movie ever. Like this shit ever happens. I'm going to finish this movie and then either phrase it's highly GROUNDBREAKING STEREOTYPE BREAKING story or bitch about how stupid it was. Stayed tuned.