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| Thursday, December 17th, 2009 | | 1:20 am |
eXtenZis
I bought myself some new photographic toys: a set of Kenko extension tubes and an off-camera flash cord. Naturally, I had to take some pictures of stuff up real close. Like rice.  What I've learned so far: - Triscuits and rice are ugly up close.
- The picture of young Abraham Lincoln on the reverse side of the 2009 penny apparently was inspired by Tommy Wiseau.
- My eye for dust is not as good as that of Mary Poppins.
- The Canon OC-E3 off-camera flash cord is too short, but at least it didn't break yet.
- Zoom lenses with extension tubes let you focus using the zoom ring. Yes, I have read this, but actually trying it out seems seriously weird.
- Extension tube lens compatibility (of the lenses that I own):
- "Nifty fifty" (50mm f/1.8): great. High magnification, small min aperture (f/22), but max focus distance is also pretty small.
- 70-200mm f/4L: great. Medium-high magnification, very small min aperture (f/32), good max focus distance.
- "Kit lens" 18-55mm EF-S: questionable. High magnification, very small min aperture (f/32), but the focus distance doesn't seem to be constant across the frame or something.
- Sigma 30mm f/1.4: too wide for anything but the 12mm tube? I didn't try just the 20mm tube. Also, not so small min aperture (f/16).
| | Sunday, December 13th, 2009 | | 6:13 pm |
| | 11:11 am |
| | Saturday, December 5th, 2009 | | 3:01 am |
| | Saturday, November 28th, 2009 | | 12:01 am |
| | Monday, November 23rd, 2009 | | 8:56 pm |
| | Monday, November 9th, 2009 | | 1:49 am |
Fun Fun Fun Fest 2009: Sunday (11/9/2009)
Today was wet and miserable and muddy, but completely awesome. I slept in and didn't go downtown to the festival until around 2:00pm lest I be tempted to give Fuck Buttons another chance. (I saw them open for Mogwai last year, and didn't find their music to be particularly interesting.) It was raining the whole way, and I am always amazed at how bad Austin drivers are at increasing their following distance, etc., in the rain. I found a parking space on the far side of the state capitol very quickly because I didn't bother looking closer. Mika Miko: punk/noise. I arrived towards the end of their set, but what I saw was pretty decent. Youth Brigade: 80's melodic hardcore punk. I hadn't heard these guys before (except maybe a snippet or interview in American Hardcore?), but they impressed me with their stage presence, tight playing, and sing-along vocals. "We'll sink with California, when it falls into the sea." Street Dogs: hardcore punk. Lead singer used to be in the Dropkick Murphys, and there's some Irish folk influence, but not nearly as much as Flogging Molly (to pick an extreme example). Enjoyable enough to keep my interest. Broadcast: electronic. Halfway between Fuck Buttons and School of Seven Bells: repetitive synthesizer fiddling, but with sometimes-haunting female vocals. I 60%-listened while eating a fish taco from Wahoo's. Coalesce: obnoxious metal-core shit. Left within the first three minutes. Riverboat Gamblers: punk. These guys put on an incredible live show, and their songs are pretty good too. Mike Wiebe has an insane amount of manic energy, always running to and fro, climbing on stuff, climbing on the crowd, tossing the microphone in the air and catching it, tossing the microphone in the air and beaning himself in the head with it, etc. They had a friend sitting in for their guitarist, Ian MacDougall, who watched from the side of the stage, standing with the aid of crutches, because he was hit by a car while riding his bike last month. However, he joined in for the last couple of songs (against his doctor's orders). Mission of Burma: experimental noise rock / post-punk. These guys are awesome, but I knew that going in. They played a great set, including new ones from The Sound The Speed The Light ("Forget Yourself", "1 2 3 Partyy", "Possession", "After the Rain") and The Obliterati ("1001 Pleasant Dreams", "2wice"), and oldies from Vs. ("That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate", "Trem Two"), "Academy Fight Song", and also at least one song I had never heard before. Also, the things that Roger Miller does to evoke specific sounds from his guitar are often fascinating (like when he strums above the frets that he's holding the strings against). More on Burma later in this post. D.R.I.: played 50 lousy songs, but I didn't stay around for more than a couple. Crystal Castles: electronic / experimental / whinecore. Hey, you know what would be better than laying down a bunch of pounding beats? Have some chick shrieking at the top of her lungs and dancing around with a strobe light in her arms, while laying down a bunch of pounding beats. For some songs she used a vocoder distortion thingie, which made them tolerable but boring. Of Montreal: indie psychedelic-pop / drama nerd freak-out / neo-glam rock? (Glam like T-Rex and Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane, not 80's hair band bullshit.) An Of Montreal performance is nothing if not a spectacle. This one involved a team of ninjas with featureless gold sequin faces, Santa Claus + elves + folks in pajamas + presents, bipedal pigs / fish / birds, a centaur oppressing underwear-clad men and women only to be violently overthrown in the end, a cowboy drummer, a keyboardist dressed in glittery red (she was the most normal person onstage, though the bassist was close), a feather-shouldered guitarist in a pink kimono or something, and in the center of it all, Kevin Barnes all tarted up like, well, a glam rocker. So yeah, it's really freaking weird. But the songs are some of the catchiest, singalongiest earworms you'll ever hear, and half of the crowd seemed to know every word. The stuff from Skeletal Lamping worked surprisingly well in concert, despite the fact that on the album the songs mostly run together into one big medley, like a queerly extravagant take-off on Abbey Road. The stuff from Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? was great, including the epic closer "The Past Is A Grotesque Animal". (Well, there was also an encore, the one about Norway, black metal, groceries, and a saint that no one has heard of.) Afterwards, I went down to the Alamo Drafthouse downtown at the Ritz, to see Not a Photograph: The Mission of Burma Story followed by a Q&A session with Roger Miller. (Burma's manager, Mark Kates, was also there.) The movie was both informative and unburdened by pretentious interviews with people unrelated to Mission of Burma (e.g. Bono or Radiohead going on about how influential they were; Moby doesn't count because he came across as a genuine Burma fan). The Q&A was interesting. There were several questions related to Roger's tinnitus: Burma uses a plexiglass shield inbetween the drummer and the other two guys to minimize the impact of the drums on Roger's hearing; he doesn't wear the big rifle-range earmuffs anymore because the special molded musician-earplugs have improved to where they don't work their way out of his ears; he doesn't use monitors on stage, and he keeps his guitar amp off to the side almost in front of him so it's not directed at him. The fact that Burma's reunion has lasted longer and produced twice as much recorded output as "back in the day" is as weird to him as to anybody else. No one has seen Martin Swope (the band's recording engineer / tape manipulator) in years, since he moved to Hawaii, but they have had e-mail contact (including the approval of finding someone else to do tape loops for the reunion). The Moby cover of "That's When I Reach For My Revolver", with the subsequent chorus-changing at the behest of MTV, was both a minor sore spot and a positive thing (the royalties bought Clint Conley a new septic tank for his house), so while they did complain about it a bit, they also invited Moby to play with them onstage for "All World Cowboy Romance" at the reunion (along with members of Gang of Four, Sonic Youth, and more). There's more (like how Roger is using the alphabetized lyric sheet from Signals, Calls, and Marches in a non-Burma project that is a reinterpretation of an I Ching themed John Cage composition because the lyric sheet is divided into four sets of sixty-four), but it's getting late. On the way back to my car, I walked along Red River Street to see if the Fun Fun Fun Fest after-show at the Mohawk had finished. As it turned out, ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead was halfway through their hour-long set (which was the last of the evening). When I asked the guy at the door what the cover charge was, he said not to worry about it, because the show was almost over. So I went in and got to see ToD play five (or so) songs in their original three-person lineup (as opposed to their six-person "two of everything" lineup). This was a pretty neat winding-down^H^H^H^Hup to a long day. | | Sunday, November 8th, 2009 | | 1:46 am |
Austin City Limits Festival: Sunday (10/4/2009)
On Sunday I wore a dry pair of shoes and brought my wet shoes from Saturday in my backpack in case it was muddy. It was muddy. I changed into the wet shoes five minutes after we got to Zilker Park. Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band: Extremely spirited finger-picked guitar + washboard duo who I had seen opening for Flogging Molly. We arrived just in time to see her set the washboard on fire during the finale. The B-52s: You know, "Love Shack", "Rock Lobster", etc. Sure, the girls might look their age, but you have to realize that they were always wearing wigs in the first place. Not sure if Fred still drives a Chrysler that seats about twenty, or whether he has switched to a hybrid. White Lies: Post-post-punk? Joy Division: The Next Generation? (Not that this is at all a bad thing.) Worth another listen (but that other listen has not happened yet). Toadies: Q: Do you wanna die? A: After standing through this entire set in the mud and the hot sun, yes. Yes, I do. At least it wasn't Matchbox 20 (though I had the two bands confused in my memory). Dirty Projectors: Bizarre indie pop band. They have reimagined all of the songs from Black Flag's Damaged from memory, and they all sound completely different. Ben Harper and Relentless7: His previous ACL appearance (2004?) did not interest me enough to approach further, but this year, avoidance of Jack White brought me to Harper's set, and it was pretty good. Harper is quite a songwriter, slide guitarist, and singer. Pearl Jam: There still is a Pearl Jam, and more surprisingly, they're still good. (Great-grandma Pearl must seal those jam jars real tightly.) Eddie Vedder rolled around in the shit^H^H^H^HDillo Dirt. Ben Harper joined in for a song, and later, Perry Farrell (of Jane's Addiction) came onstage and Pearl Jam played "Mountain Song". Those cold-like symptoms I developed the week before when driving to Lousiana (sore throat, congestion, coughing) stayed with me for a total of at least three weeks, two doctor visits, and three or four sick days. I did not have a fever. As far as I know, it was some sort of bacterial infection which went away after courses of two different antibiotics (the first had no effect). Oh, and the shoes? They went in the trash. The inside lining had worn through, and the plastic under that was cracked, which really scratched up my heels when the shoes were wet (and I stupidly forwent socks). I also developed a rash on my feet which I thought was from the Dillo Dirt, but my doctor said it was more likely to be from dyes or glues leaching out of the leather in my shoes. | | 1:25 am |
Austin City Limits Festival: Saturday (10/3/2009)
This was the day that ACL Fest turned to shit. Literally. A lot of Dillo Dirt was used on the lawn: composted yard trimmings mixed with treated sewage. On Saturday, it rained, rehydrating the Dillo Dirt into a big stinky mess. The Raveonettes: Canceled because they couldn't get their visas in time. Bell X1: Decent pop band from Ireland, but not overtly inspired by Irish folk music. The Airborne Toxic Event: Energetic indie pop band, not quite as great as Arcade Fire or The National but still pretty damn good. Flogging Molly: Awesome Irish folk-punk band, one of my favorites. However, I left early to get a good spot for Trail of Dead. ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead: Awesome art-rock band from Austin. They overdo everything, but it is great, not just gratuitous: two lead singers (usu. not simultaneously), two guitarists, two keyboardists, two drummers (with two full drum sets), etc. They closed their set with "A Perfect Teenhood" (one of favorite ToD songs), which was both wonderful and hilarious: "Fuck you / Fuck you / Fuck you / Fuck you / Fuck you / Fuck you / Fuck you / Fuck you. Thank you! Goodbye." The Decemberists: Bleh. More folk, less mutton chops? Ghostland Observatory and Dave Matthews Band: No one in my party was interested in seeing either of these bands. Afterwards I hosed off my shoes at my apartment complex's car wash station. At the time, it seemed that they could be saved... | | 12:50 am |
Austin City Limits Festival: Friday (10/2/2009)
Hey, I never got around to posting about this year's ACL Fest. Since I still care a little bit, I'll post a little bit. The week before ACL Fest, I went on a road trip to New Orleans. On the way there, I came down with cold-like symptoms, and was sick the entire time I was there. But I still got to see a bunch of neat stuff, which I'll have to post about later. Weather-wise, the first day of this year's ACL Fest was heaven. It wasn't overbearingly hot, and the new sod that had been put in at Zilker Park was wonderful: lush, green, and almost (but not quite) made me want to walk around barefoot. Cue ominous music--for tomorrow. Sound-wise, the first day of this year's ACL Fest sucked. Much like last year's Against Me! set, too much boomy bass which I suspect was causing the loudspeakers to bottom out. Sonido boomblah. The bands: School of Seven Bells: Pickpocket-inspired twin sisters singing synthpop/shoegaze while droopy-haired guy plays guitar. 100x better than at SXSW because this time the guitar worked. Avett Brothers: Pretty sure this was old-timey shit that reminded me why I regretted purchasing the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. Not bad, just not my speed. The Walkmen: I don't remember much about this. If it was really bad I would remember, but then again, if it was really good I would remember too. Daniel Johnston: Austin's favorite warbly-voiced outsider-artist singer/songwriter, now with a full band backing him up. I wasn't sure what to expect, but this was a great performance. Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3: Exceedingly strange British singer/songwriter, performing with half of R.E.M.'s touring band: Peter Buck (R.E.M.), Scott McCaughey (Young Fresh Fellows), and Bill Rieflin (Ministry, Lard, KMFDM, ...). Strangest song intro was something like "the human body is 97% water, which I drink from mother Earth, and vampirism is legal when you keep it in the family." Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Some people collect images of angels, kittens, or ducks, but Karen O prefers eyeballs. I was disappointed to find out that "Maps" is an acronym and that she is not in a bizarre love triangle with cartography. Current Music: GSM buzz going bzz bp drp bp drzz | | Saturday, November 7th, 2009 | | 10:33 pm |
Fun Fun Fun Fest 2009: Saturday (11/8/2009)
Parking downtown was lots of fun because the music festival was held in Waterloo Park, mere blocks away from the stadium where the Longhorns were playing football. How people were dressed seemed to be a very accurate indicator of which event they were going to. The park was a lot less dusty than last year, so I didn't wear a surgical mask and my asthma stayed under control. On to the bands. I linked to their spaces because that's where I listened to a bunch of their MP3s last night. Times New Viking: catchy lo-fi noise pop. Their live show exceeded my expectations. Note that the sound quality on their Myspace samples seems to be very poor, but much of the clipping is stylistic. Their songs make me think of Mates of State, Sonic Youth, and maybe Hüsker Dü. "I don't want to die in the city alone." Definitely worth another listen. Shonen Knife: all-girl Japanese punk rock trio. Yes, I've actually never listened to Shonen Knife before. They were enthusiastic, cute, slightly Engrishy, showy, more than a bit Ramones-ey, and fun. Not sure if their music would hold my attention for more than a couple of hours (the Ramones take the blame for that), but I enjoyed their show today. James Husband: indie pop solo project of one of the members of Of Montreal. (That preposition was a vexing parse!) Catchy and melodic like one would expect, but much more... down-to-earth than Of Montreal. Probably worth another listen. Red Sparowes: post-rock/post-metal. I caught the end of their set. It seemed interesting enough (by post-rock standards), and they are better musicians than spelelers. Flipper: slowed down 80's hardcore punk. They canceled! Again! (They were scheduled to be at FFF last year too, but then Krist Novoselic decided to quit because he didn't want to tour.) They were replaced with The Sword (whose song "Freya" was in a Guitar Hero game). Going on tour and not canceling still rules, okay? No Age: noise pop/punk duo. Definitely worth another listen, I would like to buy a Nouns. Also, halfway through their set, some guy in a blue shirt barreled through the crowd to the front, and suddenly there was a very active mosh pit, crowd surfing, etc. for the second half of the show. 7 Seconds: 80's hardcore punk. They played a bunch of fast, short songs that kind of sounded the same (even by punk standards). So did Minor Threat, but they didn't keep doing it for 30 years. (Yeah, Wikipedia says that 7 Seconds significantly changed their musical style, then went back to their roots.) Still significantly better than ALL (last year). (If ALL had played only Descendents songs, that would have tipped the hell out of the scales.) Death: 70's proto-punk trio. Their story is interesting (but short), so I'll make it even shorter: three brothers from Detroit were turned on to music by seeing The Beatles on Ed Sullivan; in 1975, they recorded seven punk songs before punk had been invented; only enough records were pressed to distribute to half of 1,000 homo DJs; and hardly anyone heard their stuff until recently. Yay. I only caught their last couple of songs, and they, too, were significantly better than ALL. Fucked Up: hardcore punk. Similar to Comeback Kid, in that I could get into their music more if the vocals included some singing, not just mostly-atonal screaming. The vocalist stayed down at the edge of the crowd for the part that I saw (about 15-20 minutes) but did not crowd surf, possibly because he was too overweight. Shearwater: indie rock (Wikipedia says "psych folk", which might make sense?); Okkervil River side project that took on a life of its own. The band put on a great show, despite the fact that singer/songwriter/co-founder Jonathan Meiburg was on heavy-duty prescription painkillers for a fever. Note: that there Jonathan Meiburg sure has a real purty voice. Surprises: much more noise and rocking out than I expected based on hearing Rook (I had a similar reaction to The National last year); that it is possible to use a violin bow to play a glockenspiel (they also used it to play an electric guitar, but that's not as much of a stretch); that the simultaneous use of electric bass guitar and upright bass does not cause a singularity that destroys the entire universe; that the drummer is named Thor and also plays clarinet. The Jesus Lizard: noise rock. If I had listened to this band previously I would have either: A) stayed for the whole set and enjoyed it; B) not stayed at all because I knew I would not find it interesting. Anyway, I left after four or five songs. Current Music: Flipper - Ha Ha Ha | | Thursday, November 5th, 2009 | | 12:59 am |
Come on and wash my laundry room away
I noticed some water on the laundry room floor, and oh, hey! That's not good.  Washer water faucets are now off, and I really need to call the W/D rental place tomorrow. Current Music: Against Me! - New Wave | | Thursday, October 29th, 2009 | | 12:09 am |
Póg do fiaclóir!
Tonight, I got to see the Pogues perform live! Including Shane MacGowan! He sings surprisingly well for someone with so few teeth. (Thankfully, he didn't open his mouth enough for us to see what's left of them, but he was noticeably sunken-cheeked.) For the first half of the concert, every time MacGowan would mumble-introduce a song, one of the other Pogues (Spider Stacy) would repeat the song's name so that the crowd could understand it. MacGowan also looked surprisingly old (even ignoring his catastrophic dental failings), kind of like the prematurely aged character J. F. Sebastian in the movie Blade Runner. MacGowan left the stage early on, and there were murmurs through the crowd that this was the last time we were going to see him tonight, but it wasn't. He only left the stage for a few songs that were sung by others: "Young Ned of the Hill" (Terry Woods, mandolin player); "Tuesday Morning" (Spider Stacy, tin whistle player); "Thousands Are Sailing" (Philip Chevron, guitarist and diminutive bald guy); and an instrumental. He stayed onstage for another song (which I didn't recognize) that was sung by someone else (Jem Finer?). Anyway, the rest of the band seemed to be in top form musically. And during the last song, "Fiesta", Spider Stacy played a large disposable aluminum pie pan with his head (as a percussion instrument) and then tossed it into the crowd. Punk. As. Folk. Here's the setlist, more or less. It was pretty great. (However, I would have loved to hear "Streets of Sorrow / Birmingham Six", "London, You're A Lady", and of course, "Fairytale of New York".) - Streams of Whiskey
- If I Should Fall from Grace with God
- The Broad Majestic Shannon
- Young Ned of the Hill
- Boys from the County Hell
- A Pair of Brown Eyes
- Tuesday Morning
- Kitty
- Sunny Side of the Street
- ? (instrumental) (Repeal of the Licensing Laws?)
- ?
- The Old Main Drag
- Thousands Are Sailing
- Dirty Old Town
- ?
- Bottle of Smoke
- The Sick Bed of Cúchulainn
1st encore: 2nd encore: If you're wondering about the subject line of this post, it's my attempt at using an online dictionary to translate "Kiss your dentist!" into Irish. Current Music: The Pogues - Turkish Song of the Damned | | Monday, October 5th, 2009 | | 12:25 am |
| | Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 | | 10:08 pm |
Hosting your W*****s 7 L****h party
Gabriel from Penny Arcade tweeted an enjoyable pair of links about hosting a W*****s 7 L****h party. The official version is boring: This version is awesome, and is completely worth watching: Current Mood:  amusedCurrent Music: The Beatles - She Came In Through the Bathroom W****w | | Monday, September 7th, 2009 | | 10:46 pm |
Situation: not exactly cut and dried (thankfully)
Holy crap. I just found a single edge razor blade in the tumbler of my rented clothes dryer! WTF? It must have been wedged inside the tumbler for the past two years and didn't work itself free until now. Luckily I saw it sitting at the bottom of the dryer and it didn't end up in one of my socks. There is a plastic paddle inside the tumbler that pushes the clothes around. Wedged underneath that I also found a white plastic flag (like you would find in a potted plant at a garden store). I think it said "murano" or something like that but I'm not about to dig it back out of the trash to double-check. Edit: after posting this, I started watching the 2nd episode of "Castle" and guess what? The very first shot is of a clothes dryer spinning around with a dead body inside. Not necessarily original but the timing couldn't have been better. | | 10:21 pm |
Signals, Calls, and Magnets
The liner notes to Mission of Burma's Signals, Calls, and Marches EP include the lyrics to all of the songs, which would be uninteresting except for the fact that they are in alphabetical order: "a", "against", "age", "ahh", "aim", "all", "alters", …, "whispers", "window", "windowsill", "with", "won't", "yeah", "you", "your". Combine this with inkjet-printable magnet sheets and I have a sudden urge to make some custom magnetic poetry. Current Music: Mission of Burma - Max Ernst | | Saturday, September 5th, 2009 | | 12:32 am |
Invasion of the Invasions
I just watched The Invasion. Comparing it to Invasion of the Body Snatchers, I have to ask, why did they make this movie? Sure, it wasn't a rat turd, but it wasn't exactly a caper either. Random thoughts about the movie: - I should read the novel it was based on. Apparently it has a completely different ending than either of the two film adaptations I've seen.
- The special effects in the 1978 movie were pretty cheesy. The special effects in the 2007 movie were mostly unnecessary "CSI: Miami" type shots of viruses, cells, and other microscopic stuff. Stop that.
- This movie really did not need a car chase scene.
- Nicole Kidman seems to have no facial blemishes that are visible in HD. Is she a pod person, or has Hollywood makeup and/or retouching caught up with TV resolution?
- Has anyone made a film adaptation of Philip K. Dick's short story, "The Hanging Stranger"? It explores some of the same themes, but in a more gruesome manner.
- Veronica Cartwright (Cassandra Spender, you X-Files fans) was in both the 1978 and 2007 movies. She also played the younger sister in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. Supposedly, someone is foolhardy enough to remake The Birds. Do I sense an impending cameo?
Random thoughts ( including spoilery type stuff (for both the 1978 and 2007 versions)... ) Current Music: Björk - Joga | | Saturday, August 29th, 2009 | | 3:37 pm |
| | Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 | | 10:43 am |
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