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Best Week Ever
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videos.antville.org

PitchforkMedia.com reviewed the reissue of Asobi Seksu's self-titled LP
Asobi Seksu is one of my favorite NY bands and I can't wait to hear some new stuff from them.

Me with Neil Gaiman at the 17th Annual Harvey Awards, part of the MoCCA Art Fest this weekend.
it was not a bad weekend, not bad at all. it was a bit rough, but fun. both days i was the third MoCCA volunteer on premises (Liz Gorinsky and Anne Carlton beat me on saturday as expected, and two very eager crew workers were in before 8:30 on sunday) and got to work almost immediately and aside from a few major snags the first couple hours on satuday, things went fairly smoothly.
i didn't get to do nearly as much shopping as i would've liked (i only bought a few mini-comics and some t-shirts, but still all quality stuff), but i got a surprising amount of sketches in my limited time in the exhibiting space, including some high quality work from Andi Watson, R. Stevens, Craig Thompson, Andy Runton, Scott Morse, Jim Mahfood, Farel Dalrymple and Bill Sienkiewicz, among many others.
my head is currently throbbing as a result of the pressure system overhead that refuses to just release all the rain its built up, so i can't recount all the great stories from this weekend, but i'm sure i'll be telling them all year like i did with last year's Art Fest and Harveys.

additionally, Happy 20th Birthday to my good sweet friend Elysa Fein!

Happy Birthday Mix, June 22nd, 2004:

Falling Away - Preston School of Industry
Innocent Civilians - Radiohead
Human Behavior (Björk Cover) - The Decemberists
Happy Birthday To Me (Feb. 15) - Bright Eyes
I Didn't Come Here To Die - Spoon
Untitled (Velapene Screen remix) - Interpol
A Ton Étoile - Noir Désir
Losing You - The New Amsterdams
Ocean Breathes Salty - Modest Mouse
5 Alive - Self
Rudie Can't Fail - The Clash
Thanks For The Killer Game Of Crisco Twister - Minus The Bear
I Ain't Marching Anymore (Live from the Philadelphia Folk Festival) - Phil Ochs
In Out - Alarmbell
Ubernaut - Punky Brewskis
One In A Million - Bodyjar
Le Quartier (Live from Black Session) - Yann Tiersen
This Is Intolerable - Kupek

the mix is exactly one hour long, interestingly enough.

wow...best font i've seen in weeks, at least



being social is fun. not is not. the weekend was fun because i spent most of it with heather and maria with guest appearances from mike and anna. the past few days have not because i've been sitting around with nothing to do and no one to talk to. that and yesterday and half of today i had a really nasty stomach virus thing that had me feeling awful.
although monday i did record a new song called "2 Weeks" which is up on PureVolume
i've done a little work on a cover of "This Charming Man" (i've been listening to both the Death Cab and the Stars versions back to back to figure out where i want to take it) and i've been planning to spend a chunk of the weekend recording a cover of "This Is Intolerable" to celebrate my birthday on tuesday, though i suppose i could do it after my birthday...it was just an idea.

i have applications all filled out and ready to go for Express and Sam Goody, i just can't seem to get to the mall.
i need to find out who my staff is for the art festival so i can start emailing them about procedure and movement.


i like my hair. that's all.

busy lately. still no job, but busy.
saturday was the Harvey Award Exhibition opening and reception at MoCCA. i got there around 2:30 to help with whatever needed to be done. as per usual, i forgot these sort of events require both my telling people in advance that i will be volunteering and that i wear something more presentable than a clean MoCCA t-shirt. the turnout was not as great as i'd hoped, but i always hope for more than i can get.
i ducked out a little early, a little after nine, i think. i got to penn station, realized i had almost an hour to kill, and sauntered about when i saw a group of familiar looking kids. forst i noticed one guy dressed in black with a ponytail and undercut the same way i had for the last year of high school and the first year of art school. then i noticed the flashy blue shirt with oriental-styled silver trim on the girl next to him. as i doubled back a bit and studied their faces, i suddenly recognized them as nicolle lewis from tri-d model congress and her boyfriend billy. i snuck around the ticket machines and crowds of rushing travellers, slid up by the column behind billy, stalked right up beside his ear and all of its undercut glory and proclaimed "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww..."
all four of them (i could not identify the other two, but they were clearly all together) turned to identify the interloper. billy seemed to pick it up the quickest. he turned and said "hey man, how ya doin'?" "eeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwww..." i continued to taunt the shadow of my deplorable fashion sense. nicolle's eyes lit up and she whelped "derrick!", pounced from her place and hugged me. "yes, hello, how are you all this evening?" i squeaked in return. nicolle's face stiffened as she fell back into place and mired "you don't remember me."
this flabbergasted me. as if i just go over to random packs of kids in large stations of transit and expect them to include me in their reindeer games. i motioned towards the ghost of bad taste past and opted "like i'm gonna remember your boy here and not you." it was at this point i decided it would be more fun if i identified neither of them by name just to disturb the girl.
we carried out conversation for a few minutes. the four of them had trekked to china town for trinkets. nicolle felt the need to remind me for the fifth time that she just finished her first year of college after skipping ahead a year, and i reminded her that she hated the school and that her mom wouldn't allow her to leave home for a real legitimate school until she was eighteen, as she had told me via IM all year.
they quickly left to board their train, but as the three boys rushed ahead, nicolle strayed a bit and queried "you really don't remember me?" i smiled and admitted "i remember you, nicolle. of course i remember you." when she heard her name, she smiled and hopped back off. i spent the next hour coming up with ways i could have revealed my memory more dramatically. i thought to post them here, but i figured they would work better in a movie script or something along those lines.
sunday morning i woke slightly earlier than usual. i was feeling a bit queasy and it was raining a fair bit and i was to be in the city by 10:30. this is because i had told Ken Wong from MoCCA that i would be at his actual office by 10:30 to help them move stuff. Ken directs the marketing for CopCorp, a licensing group whose clients include Jim Benton's It's Happy Bunny, which my little sister adores and i see pretty much everywhere i go. this week is the international licensing fair at the Javitz Center and they needed help setting up and breaking down their stuff. the work went fairly fast and it felt good. lifting boxes, moving things around, building stuff, i don't know it just makes me feel more productive than when i'm at the computer designing stuff. its more immediate. anyway, i did that for about six hours and walked from the Javitz Center back to Madison Square Garden, continuing to Jim Hanley's for a bit of self-imposed required reading in the form of Y-The Last Man, A Sort of Homecoming (they only had part two, not three, argh, i need part three) and Runaways, then back to Penn Station where i again rewarded myself with two McDonald's cheeseburgers and apple pies, a Nutrageous bar and a bottle of Sierra Mist. when i got home, they had just started watching Calendar Girls so i watched that and enjoyed.
this morning, nova was getting her stuff together to drive out to pennsylvania for her new gig. as per usual, she does her little freak out routine if anyone mentions anything. my muscles were achey so i was moving slow and as little as i really felt like. i hovered at the table on my way to the kitchen when a gap in the dvd rack took my eye. i studied it for a moment when i noticed the west wing dvd box set was missing. made sense as it was nova's. she must have wanted it with her. "oh, you're bringing the west wing dvds." "well, i packed them, why, do you have a problem with that?" "no, no, i'm just saying because..." "if you want to watch them i suppose i could leave them if that what you reall want to do" "no, no, not at all. they're yours, you can take them..." "fine, i was just watching them in my room, you can take them later today"
i learned many years ago to not even try arguing with nova. its futile. no matter what you're saying, she'll throw a fit about it.
after she and my dad got in each other's ways about fifteen more times, then left the house at the same time and came back because they each forgot something at the same time and left again for real at the same time, i mostly lay down for the morning. around 1:30, maria and i got together, deciding to return the dvds i had from blockbuster for ones we could watch. on our way we ran into erin who had just gotten back from hawaii a couple of days ago. she had been visiting heather who returned today from visiting her mom in hawaii for a month. after i ruled out all mindless slasher movies as they seem to be the only thing my friends ever like and the only thing i ever hate, all maria and i could agree would be interesting to watch were kill bill volume 1 and the matrix revolutions. on our way back we stopped and chatted with tom donato for a good fifteen minutes or so, then ran into erin again in cvs and the three of us went to bella lune pizza. by the time maria and i got back to my house, she realized she had to go to work. my mother and i decided we weren't really interested in either film, so we returned them and got Intolerable Cruelty and Shattered Glass.
we watched shattered glass tonight. it was really quite interesting to watch. it was fun to finally see hank azaria play a nice good guy and i think i really like hayden christiansen as an actor between that and Life As A House

ok, tired of typing now:

JerseyDrift: braar!
JerseyDrift: got a digital video camera for my birthday
ArtWhenWeMelt: braar indeed
ArtWhenWeMelt: happy buddy icon for you
JerseyDrift: now we can make refill robots
ArtWhenWeMelt: OH, SHIT
ArtWhenWeMelt: you just said the magic words
JerseyDrift: I gotta figure out how to work this crazy thing over the summer
ArtWhenWeMelt: indeed you do
ArtWhenWeMelt: indeed
ArtWhenWeMelt: you do
ArtWhenWeMelt: you can be like george jetson on the treadmill
ArtWhenWeMelt: BRIAN, stop this crazy thing!!!

happy june, everbuddy!
less than three weeks till the two decade mark on my odometer. wait...that's how many miles you've travelled...i dunno how much that would be. whatever, two decades.

nova's home for the week as she's between a couple of gigs with Emily's List. we joyously watched the West Wing viewer's choice marathon on Bravo on monday. her new job starts next monday in pennsylvania. since she's home, we talk politics a little more than usual, which is to say all the time. she's happy because the special election in south dakota yesterday went to the democrat, making all three of south dakota's congresspeople democrats, despite them being a predominantly republican state. there are all these specials on tv comparing Bush and Kerry and how different the nation would be under either.
it reminds me of 1992 when Clinton was running against Bush. i didn't understand anything about politics or government yet. all i knew was that i liked Mega Man, Teenage Mutant Nina Turtles, X-Men and Snailiens. i asked my mother what the big deal was with the president and she told me that if Clinton won, the nation would be completely different. of course i didn't know what she meant, but all i knew in my head was that i loved Snailians, and if things were completely different then i wouldn't get to play with Snailians anymore.
yes, in the third grade i was a conservative. i saw the nightly reports on desert storm and i knew it was scary, but i was just beginning to watch the news at that time, so i didn't know it wasn't always like that. i didn't know that we weren't always watching footage of soldiers and that the news wasn't supposed to be scary. i thought good television was supposed to be scary. after all, all my friends at the time loved Are You Afraid Of The Dark?, that show on nickelodeon about this group of kids who told scary stories around a campfire. of course, the stories were silly to anyone over the age of ten, but i never particularly liked being scared, so i hardly ever watched. that reminds me of the time i went with the Feketts to see the Blair Witch Project, but that's a different story.
thing is, all i knew of the news was that every night we watch desert storm. i knew desert storm wouldn't last forever and that there would be other missions and wars and everything else, but i didn't know how or why any of this was the way it was or how a different president would affect it.
as the election drew closer, all i knew was that Bill Clinton played the saxophone on popular television shows and Dana Carvey did a great George Bush impersonation. yeah, i definitely grew up on television. anyway, this made Clinton a bit cooler in my book and i'd come to realize Snailians would be gone in two months anyway, as all toys i was ever interested were, so i decided a Clinton white house might be nice, and i was right. by 1996, i understood a bit more about the US governement and the economy and i was partially concerned with the issues and i knew Clinton was doing a great job. of course, it wasn't until 1998, when i began warming up for Model Congress, that i really took an interest in politics and started following the issues intently.

i've still never forgotten about Snailians. they were fairly uncomplicated toys, but i just thought they were the coolest. i only had one, he wore purple body armor and his name was Roosevelt.
yes, the Snailians were all named after past US Presidents. how's that for a funny coincidence?