Prick up your ears…

One of the things I tend to fuss about is my sound system. I’m a guy that way. A guy from the generation of headphones and high production albums, the generation that valued the size of your record collection and the quality of the equipment used to play it. But for all my fussing, I’ve never taken the punge to get a really super expensive piece of equipment. Even when I’ve bought second tier stuff, it’s been on sale, floor models and such. And I’ve always placed a higher value on compactness than on sonic power: I usually prefer small and clear over big and punchy. So my most recent configuration has really felt like a not so great compromise that I’m pretty much constantly plotting to improve, which is pretty funny, given that I no longer even use a dedicated CD player: I just use mp3 files played by my computer through my amp. From the audiophile point of view I’m already a lost cause. It’s like someone asking a gourmand which is the right hot sauce to eat at Taco Bell.

Anyway, all that being said, for some reason today my system is really sounding good to me, Especially when Dusty was singing “Some of Your Lovin'”. Since my hearing is going with age and earbuds, maybe I should just give up on buying any new stuff from here on out, it’s just going to get fainter and fainter as the years go on.

And counting…

There is one year left until we swear in a new president. One year until the current crop of grafting hacks returns to their real jobs: soaking up cash from the boards of the businesses that they have spent eight years enriching. From their fenced estates they will be able to survey the wreakage of the countries their rapaciousness has stripped, and the battered divided world their ideologies have fed. Will they have won the war or terror? Have they increased the number and security of those communities of faith the pledged to provide for? Are there any children left behind? Has the mission been accomplished? Was the seizure of power worth it? Have they restored the dignity of the office? Improved the economy?

One year until we face something that has to be better than we have now.

Boom Boom Crash Meh…

Took myself to a matinee of Cloverfield. For six bucks it wasn’t so bad.

It’s two weeks away…

…and for the first time in my life, my show is basically done: the work is finished except for a couple of minor things, and I just spent the afternoon at the gallery hanging it all. There is something unnerving about that fact.

Things are not completely installed: the gallery will need to use the space for a private showing of something for a client this coming week, so they will document the position of everything, take it down and then I will go back in and do the final hanging, and there are a couple of things at the framer or in transit from other places, but we know where everything is going on the walls and it will be the matter of a couple of hours work to get it all in its final position.

But those of you who have been through this with me before (waltzingtree, girlfagpnw) know that in every other instance I am running around assembling works up until the very last minute. I’ve always used the deadline of a show as the way to bring works to completion. This time, I worked in a completely different way.

Protected: Goodbye Russ…

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At least Jay thinks I rock…

Bye Vampira, I sure hope that Cher paid you royalties.

Look at what one of my students got for me at the punk-rock craft fair: a Jay McCarron photo and an armband doohickey. I feel so glamorous, like I’m in a Saturn Roadster or something.

Last night I was remembering how much I liked the Post Office challenge, and how I wish there was more stuff like that this season. I’m so tired of Tim saying “Gather round designers, I have a surprise for you”. Don’t you get it Bravo? The contestants are supposed to surprise US, you aren’t supposed to constantly surprise THEM to try to generate drama. When you do that, it’s just like having them run an obstacle course. The good thing about Jay was that he was surprising and unpredictable from week to week. This season everyone just stays true to type and tries to duck what ever is thrown at them.

Typing all of that made me feel extra-extra-gay.

Protected: Oh yoko…

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Tide turned…

The snow didn’t happen. The rain was minor. Having received advice, I went to CB2 and bought some FLOR. The weather was raw. Now I realize that I don’t even like to walk down Canal Street any more. It’s devolved into a vaguely sinister souk, fueled by peoples desperate need for status. The elderly asian women who offer me dvd’s under their breaths remind me of the Times Square drug dealers of my highschool years, but what they’re trying to sell me is the chance to watch crappy first run movies in the privacy of my own home.

I used to love the way that the low rent knockoff market would generate weird hybrid commodities that just combined the desirable parts of a number of other items into some new monster. Everyone loves Franenstein’s creature. But now the goal is to look like you can afford some piece of Vuitton crap, and to head home with some story of how you braved the wilds of lower Manhattan to get it. It doesn’t matter if you are a smart shopper or a rube, because every one knows that what you’ve bought there is shit anyway. Herds of bovine suckers cluster in the middle of blocks, impossible to get around, while the sharps try to lure them into the warren-like storefronts, with an air of rapacious disdain. All of it is in service to a commodity ideal that has been drained of joy.

A few blocks up Broadway You can buy the “real thing”, from Vuitton, Prada, Kate Spade, etc., now that Soho has been completely converted into a cobbled luxury market. But there’s barely any difference. The notion of a ubiquitous standard of luxury is as odious as one of a ubiquitous standard of entertainment. People in Shanghai and Mumbai are being offered the same handheld video DVDs of Alvin and the Chipmonks as I am. I’m an advocate of dismantling corporate copyright, but even I don’t think that that’s progress.

Hanging in the balance…

Is the storm coming or not? That’s the question the sky is asking. All I know is that it’s mid-day and the boiler is on break between shifts so my feet are cold. It reminds me of living in San Francisco. While I was away this weekend, I hired someone to come in and clean the apartment, so I came home to a shockingly tidy space. I’m embarrassed by how different the floors feel under foot. But I have to buy a new little carpet to put underneath my desk chair so it doesn’t keep rolling away from the keyboard. Anyone have experience with CB2’s carpet tiles?

I’ve noticed that when the cleaning professional encounters my more haphazard work surfaces (my two desks, basically) they have to make a guess about how to tackle it. So today I’m seeing a number of my little containers repurposed in kind of quirky ways that make me hunt around for stuff more. Now I get to audition their solution and see if it works.

Earlier I was playing Liz Phair’s Supernova over and over and singing along. Out in the hall work has resumed on the renovation: thumping, scraping, etc. That’s in contrast to Boss Hog’s Ski Bunny, which is what on the playlist now.