Oh sweet Angostura Bitters, how you make my ice look like it bleeds into a glass of bourbon so nicely after an arduous day at the office. Metaphors abound.
Though I have no desire ever to see Jimmy Eat World live again (I mean, nothing will evertop this), I am kind of psyched that their new record is coming out next month. Even though they’re about as generic as any other pop rock radio act at this point, they’re so good at being generic that it’s worth the fact that I share the same sentiment as throngs of 14 year old girls. (Sidenote: Static Prevails, the self titled 10″ and Clarity are still all crucial and valid monuments of 90′s emo.)
What’s up, Helvetica Neue. You solved a problem by bringing some order to chaos with a fuck ton of text on a zany, difficult to deal with compositionally and completely reversed-lit photograph. Every now and again, I don’t hate you. (This is still a digital rough, by the way.)
I don’t really like Lucero as a band, but there are a handful of songs (“Slow Dancing,” “Nights Like These,” “Fistful of Tears” and this one) that just fucking ruin me.
I got drafted at 19. Me and a bunch of boys from home. January ’43, drove out to Pine Bluff and signed on. Went to basic south of Birmingham, put me on west coast bound train. Spent three days out in San Diego and they shipped me back east again. Left a port out of New York. Slept for months in British rain. Tore it up down in London town and they shipped me back out again.
The preacher said, “Boys he who is killed tonight will dine with the Lord in Paradise.” One boy spoke up, said, “Preacher come on, eat your supper with us.”
Never talk about those first days. Lots of friends left behind. But I made it all the way across France, and I fought at the Maginot line. Road a tank into Belgium, liked them better than the French, and like my daddy, thirty years before I did my time in a trench. Lots of days there’s no water, but the liquor kept me warm. The cellars were stocked to the ceiling with booze so I carried a bottle with my gun.
Three times I made sergeant, but I’m not that kind of man. And pretty much just as quick as I could I get busted back to private again ’cause takin’ orders never suited me, but giving them out was much worse. I could not stand to get my friends killed, so I took care of myself first. Now I know that don’t sound right. Don’t think too bad of me. Now it keeps me up nights, what I could have done differently.
I’d be no guest at the table of the Lord. His food was not to be mine ’cause I cursed His name every chance that I could. And I reckon that’s why I’m still alive.
(Gaslight Anthem does a rad cover of this, but something about just a guy and an electric guitar and a bottle of Jameson makes it right.)
I still have not seen Inception, and there is a laundry list of movies I want to see (The Good Heart, Buried, Jack Goes Boating, Red, The Town, Life During Wartime … to name a few), but I am so busy and stressed my I actually am having my face break out, like I’m suddenly ten years younger. Except now instead of expecting broken dreams and hearts I actually have them. Awesome.
So this is part of a thing I’m doing / have been involved in for awhile. My big current after-work work is designing a series of 13 posters to go up in MUNI bus shelters across San Francisco using the work created during the collaborative class that 826 Valencia (where I used to be a design intern at) and First Exposures (where I was / will continue to be a mentor at) had last spring. Basically all these random parts of my volunteer life in SF collided and I said I’d be more than happy to help in developing any output. There’s going to be this bus shelter campaign, then I’ll be heading up laying out a book come winter and there will be an exhibition featuring the original works in their complete form at SF Camerawork in January. All of this is awesome. (And I don’t mean for me, I mean for the kids.)
But this piece in particular is sort of near and dear to me as it’s the group I worked with. Getting everyone to work together and be productive took effort and all, but it soon became pretty apparent that all the kids wanted to do was find a way to define their rebellion, their anxiety towards a world they felt could be improved; the central theme they came up with was “What if San Francisco could be something it’s not, what if it could be better?”
Discussions amounted to dealing with seeing all the users in the Tenderloin (where myself and two of the kids live), the trash on the streets about town, the pressure to succeed and the desire to grow up – or at least not be constrained by the rules that come with early teenage life – and this ridiculous and unrelenting optimism that they had were the topic of every meeting.
And though the process was arduous at points, the result just astounds me. Dane, my friend and co-mentor of the group, and I just sort of half-guided everything. The kids came up with every concept, every line of thought and everything to photograph. They wanted to showcase street art, skateboarding, and things vaguely outside the lines of the law as methods of expression that they felt were too restricting in an urban environment. That they wanted certain freedoms and felt the penalties for expressing themselves were too harsh for a world that is so often brutal.
Every group had a different theme and idea for their project. I guess it was just great to see the kids you work with for weeks come to the conclusion that the message they want to deliver, the voice they want to be heard, is that of their own independence. Being involved with this reminds me of hearing punk rock for the first time.
My overall goal for this is to honor the work of the kids as much as possible; while I put pressure on myself for any publicly visible work, I feel that delivering the vision of the students is by far a more important aspect, for they’ve all put their trust in me to stay true to their intentions. And I look at this work and though this one piece is incredibly cut down from what will be in the book and certainly cut from what will be in the show (the writer, Evelyn, is so phenomenal that after reading the pages of free verse she crafted in response to the photography I am now certain she will be published at a very young age and it’s unfortunate we could only fit her two sentences in this poster) … the content is still more inspiring to me than anything I’ve seen lately.
To keep the wonder, angst and idealism of youth is to survive as yourself in the world. And to be a part of organizations that promote it is everything.
The importance of writing in about four minutes that were put on television once and though the entire first four years were brilliant, something about this scene is just spectacular. Whenever I need to write something, this is the first thing I think of. I don’t know why, I think it’s the end, just the way words can handle a situation. I mean, sure the writing for the scene is great but the subtext of the importance of words and how simple attention can drastically alter mood … So good, so good.
The shape of work to come. Possibly. Early drafts so I don’t want to put them all up publicly, but initial response has been good. Here’s some teasers.
I was living in a house when Elliott Smith killed himself and this terrible excuse of a person my roommate Brandon was dating came in to my room to ask me if I’d heard the news. Strange how we associate things.
I can’t imagine how terrified he would have been at the Oscars. But hey, Johnny Walker Red, right?
There are certain goals in life that seem unattainable. Creating something as potent and crushing as this is one of them in my book.
We (finally) got a copywriter at work today. After a couple initial meetings and some chatting it seems like she’ll be a good fit, if for no other reason the mind of a writer seems to work so much differently than mine and that’s why it’s always excellent to work with a writer on any sort of project. (And probably why I always am a sucker for a writer?) Best ideas abound and I think I’m going to be able to let loose on some cool things soon enough. (Like creating a brand.) (Which is insane.)
Then I got home and realized that my job is the thing I’m most excited about in life right now. And just how sad that is, I guess. Life is so askew of where I want it to be, where I thought I could take it. Rebuild rebuild, but still. But still.
It’s getting darker earlier. It’s staying cold, but getting colder. It’s going to be a long, lonely fall. Straight to winter, straight to the bottom.
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It’s nights like these that make me sleep all day. It’s nights like these that make you feel so far away. It’s nights like these that nothing is for sure. It’s nights like these I don’t want you anymore.
Now I’ve only got this one wish; that I was good enough to make you forget the only boy who ever broke your heart, ’cause nights like these tear me apart.
It’s nights like these the saddest songs don’t help. It’s nights like these your heart’s with someone else. It’s nights like these I feel like giving up. It’s nights like these I don’t seem to count for much.
Beer tastes like blood. My mouth is numb and I can’t make the words I need to say. She had a weakness for writers, and I, I was never that good with words anyways.
Okay, I like this show and all, it can be melodramatic, but the premiere was probably one of the best episodes of the entire series. Holy shit what a great start to the season, the last scene was killer and Peggy is finally getting let loose on creative endeavors.
Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Yes.
Jameson in the office. Life goal.
“Turning creative success in to business is your work. And you’ve failed.”
“At least I’m thinking ahead.”
“It doesn’t always work, does it?”
Okay this huge WikiLeaks story that is breaking right now is ridiculously amazing (from a journalistic standpoint). The Guardian and NY Times are running front page stories in conjunction with the release of the documents, and there’s even a pretty great map of some of the bigger events discussed.
I’d have more to write about it, but I think Julian Assange, who spoke recently at TED, covers most of it on his own:
All of this is so fucking awesome. (Except the fact that it’s all happening because we’re still in these ridiculous conflicts.) The only bad part is that now the Obama administration is going to have to answer for all of these documents, which are all between 2004 and January 2009 before the new Afghanistan strategy was crafted. That being said, war is war and it was his call to stay there. I just wish there was a retroactive policy where the Bush policy advisers would have to answer for some of this shit.
Also that TED talk is pretty great. “Capable, generous men do not create victims, they nurture victims.”
