last week's jams:

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Best Week Ever
Gizmodo
Brooklyn Vegan
You Ain't No Picasso
Music (For Robots)
videos.antville.org

so i'm browsing through GigPosters.com at work, looking up bands i like and looking to see who designed the posters i like and what other posters those designers have done because that's the kind of geek i am, when i realize that i really dig a handful of the Minibosses posters, and that all of them were done by the same dude, one Matt Smith, so I guess the band likes him or something.
anyway, there are some that i like more than others (these three are great, the rest i'm not feelin' so much) but whatever.

my favorite ones so far are almost all from Heads of State, who did the poster for the Wilco/Flaming Lips/Sleater-Kinney show Nova and I saw on new years eve.
they have a consistent style to their posters, so you can tell they all came from the same people, but each is crafted with intent and thoughtfulness so they're not just copies of one another but a system of beautiful posters.
really, check their stuff out, its fantastic.
i particularly love this one they did for Q And Not U

this is what i spend my evenings staring at:


well, not really. usually there's at least seven windows open with word documents, unfinished web pages, rough layouts in photoshop and illustrator...whatever. but yeah...that's what my desktop looked like this morning.

i spent ALL DAY yesterday at the lab working on my books for Graphic Design 2, but at least all of the pages are done. designed, printed, folded, cut, and ordered, and windows cut in section three where applicable. now i need to bind them. eww.
web design class i'm working on the layout and graphics and such for ducktastic.com, so i really need to register that so i'm legitimately working on it. unlike my current website, which is basically a storage facility for whatever i feel like showing off, ducktastic.com will be a more well-thought out portfolio site with alot less content but generally alot nicer.
i'm going to register and host it with doteasy and use a site counter from StatCounter. my photos are mostly going to stick with The lomographic Society International and my music will mostly be on MacJams and PureVolume, so i don't need to worry about hosting those.
additionally, i want to overhaul this blog so other people actually use it as was originally intended as a consortium of mish-mashed ideas amongst a gaggle of cohorts, or whatever.
more on that later. i've discussed revamping plans with brian and dan, since they're the only two aside from me that seem to remember this blog exists, though they don't post very often.
i've learned that people don't like the pink for some reason. kids in my graphic design classes seem to think the pink is way hot, but i think that's just because its trendy. anyway, the revamped blog will be a seperate entity from ducktastic.com, most likely, so i want the two designs to be different. plus, i did this pink bubble thing over a year ago. its time for something new. both my webpage and my blog have gone through eight different designs each, and i've settled on design number eight for both of them since last january. time for change.

"TV On The Radio has added a sixth member into the fold. Robert Lowe, vocalist and bass player for the Chicago rock group 90 Day Men, officially became a member of TVOTR on January 5th, 2005 when he joined the band on stage, opening for George Clinton and The P Funk Allstars at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

In the future, Rob will perform with TV on a regular basis as well as contribute to the follow up to 'Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes.'

The band is currently in New York City working on new material for their follow up and plans to have the new album finished in time for a Fall 2005 release."


dammit, i was supposed to go to that show, too. stupid sprained wrist...

oh well, new member and new album coming this year. sweet deal!

this is the most accurate portrayal of what i know to be "indie kids" i've seen in a while (i would have just posted the comic but its a bit big)
it bothers me that i've just sort of fallen into a stereotype.

whatever, i like the music.

for people who don't occasionally check out my sketchjournal (scroll down), here's probably my favorite entry yet:




website status: new layout process begins this week (as part of a class assignment, but i want a new layout anyway, this one's been up for almost a year)
one of these days i'm finally going to get around to registering my domain, i'm hoping i'm confident enough with the new layout i come up with this month to use that on the real website (not school-based) and just need to replace a word here or there (most likely "sanskrit" -> "ducktastic")

yeah, ducktastic.com
let's see how that works.

quack quack, baby.
heh, that should be my tagline.

1 - Les Savy Fav - Je T'aime
2 - Björk - Like Someone In Love
3 - Wilco - I Am The Man Who Loves You
4 - Beulah - Popular Mechanics for Lovers (live, acoustic)
5 - Stars - Elevator Love Letter
6 - Kings of Convenience - Love Is No Big Truth (live, acoustic)
7 - Pixies - La La Love You
8 - The Futureheads - Hounds of Love (live Kate Bush cover)
9 - My Bloody Valentine - When You Sleep
10 - Divine Comedy - Perfect Lovesong
11 - The Dears - Heartless Romantic (acoustic)
12 - The Blood Brothers - Love Rhymes with Hideous Car Wreck
13 - Towa Tei - The End of a Love Affair
14 - TV On The Radio - You Could Be Love
15 - Modest Mouse - The Good Times Are Killing Me
Click here to download (52MB zip file)


there are tons of totally rocking appropriate songs i've got here that didn't make the cut, but i really like the flow of this mix. for the most part, every other track switches back and forth from smooth and sweet to boppable.
note: i used absolutely no songs from the Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs because everyone should listen to that regardless of the context. these tracks here i find to be an interesting cross-section of alternative love songs. any mix where i can cut from Divine Comedy immediately to The Blood Brothers without sounding awful is totally awesome, in my opinion.

maybe i'll upload the music later.
maybe.

yeah...

The Go Find has a music video on iTunes today. wow.
the video is for the single "Over the Edge," which was one of my most overplayed mp3s of the fall semester when i first get heavily into mp3 blogs and finding fun new music by bands i'd hardly ever heard anything about.

the video's not to great, just an expansion on the album art, but cute nonetheless, and its still a great song.

i know it makes me a total hipster poser to read and like Pitchfork, but i do, and i tend to agree with their opinions. this week's weekly feature is a list they compiled of the top 100 albums of 2000-2004, celebrating our reaching the half-way point of the aughts. (last week they counted down the top 100 singles of 2000-2004)

anyway, early on in this list, they gave a little critique that i'd been looking for for years, the reason why i liked Eminem so much in 1999 and 2000 and have had absolutely no interest in everything he's done since:


093: Eminem
The Marshall Mathers LP
[Interscope; 2000]

There's Marshall Mathers, and there's Slim Shady. There's the multi-millionaire from Detroit writing lengthy letters to fans, and there's the multi-millionaire calling his fans "fucking retards." There's the man wondering why parents are allowing their children to listen to his music ("Now because of this blonde mop that's on top/ And this fucked up head that I've got, I've gone pop?"), and there's the shifty thug screaming "I don't owe you a motherfucking thing." There's the single father from a broken home inexplicably finding himself the idol of millions, and there's the obnoxious class clown reveling in the rewards and money he's received for acting like a fuck-up.

There are the thoughtful and considered stories of Em's life, and there's the skit where Em pretending to be both some guy getting his dick sucked by the Insane Clown Posse and the Insane Clown Posse sucking some guy's dick. There's a brilliant and nuanced track tackling fan worship and artistic responsibility like "Stan", and there's an interminable and nearly unlistenable wife-murdering scree like "Kim". There's a happy-go-lucky shiny pop hit like "The Real Slim Shady", and there's a hard-knock-life dirge like "Amityville". There's the doubt and reflection in "The Way I Am", and there's the irredeemably ignorant fag-bashing in "Criminal".

This is where Em played Marshall against Slim like a chess master playing both sides of the board to a draw. Marshall redeems Slim; Slim validates Marshall; Eminem tries to stay true to both, and succeeds by simply acknowledging that both Slim and Marshall need to co-exist in order for Eminem to survive. This is where Eminem rose to the top. This is where Eminem began to fall. --David Raposa



in case you're wondering, the #1 album in their opinion is Radiohead's Kid A, which i have absolutely no qualms with as i find that album to be as close to perfection as i've ever found in one disc.
other interesting picks that i enjoy:
99 - The Unicorns' Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?
96 - The Decemberists' Castaways & Cutouts
94 - The Strokes' Room On Fire
81 - Les Savy Fav's Rome (Written Upside Down)
79 - The Go! Team's Thunder Lightning Strike
59 - M.I.A./Diplo's Piracy Funds Terrorism Vol. 1
57 - Ted Leo/Pharmacists' Hearts of Oak
56 - The Postal Service's Give Up
54 - Joanna Newsom's The Milk-Eyed Mender
50 - Kanye West's The College Dropout
47 - The Shins' Chutes Too Narrow
46 - TV On The Radio's Young Liars
45 - The Arcade Fire's Funeral
41 - Godspeed You Black Emperor!'s Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
34 - Sufjan Stevens' Greetings From Michigan: The Great Lake State
27 - Broken Social Scene's You Forgot It In People
23 - The Notwist's Neon Golden
11 - Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
7 - Modest Mouse's The Moon & Antarctica
3 - Interpol's Turn On The Bright Lights

there are obviously a lot more albums on the list, with a greater range of music, sorta (i have little respect for Jay-Z, sorry) and there are others on the list that i have and chose not to mention because i don't think they're all that noteworthy right now, but these are the ones that i found of particular interest.

uh-huh

HOLY CRAP! "Israel-Palestinian truce 'likely'"???

this is, like, HUGE.

i can't believe condoleezza rice is going to take partial credit for this. dammit all, now she'll have this great thing right over her shoulder whenever anyone tries to point out how terrible she is.

still, if this goes through, good stuff.

lonebeatnik's just my username. the speed of boredom is the name of the blog, and i think the name still suits with your entry included. if i could change the url, i would, and i may someday when i care enough to do it, but for now its free and easy.

for about a month now, the lomographic society international has been posting little teasers. i presume this is all leading up to a new camera called the goldfish. from the looks of the photos, it's clearly a wide-angle lens camera (fish-eye lens, even). i'm guessing 35mm from the image sizes and shapes, with some nice light leaks within the frame of the lens, and a warm gentle fuzz to the colors. it also may be a low-speed camera, judging by the most recent entry. or maybe it has speed controls. the lens also appears to have some curved ridges along the edge: