Shuffling through My Top Rated

I currently and temporarily lack access to a reliable version of photoshop so I decided it was quite a good time for an all-text post. There haven't been enough of these lately. So today, what with super-duper Tuesday looming and voting happening here in quaint ole Nutmegger State CT, with a wonderful conversation held this evening with a long-lost high school buddy, with the Super Bowl around the corner what will I write about?

Well it has been about a year that I've been an ipod addict, and tonight I thought it would be fun to liveblog a journey through the playlist My Top Rated.

I started off with an Elliott Smith tune called "In the Lost and Found (honky bach)," which has been a favorite of mine for years. Smith's melodies are remarkable, and while his most intensely melancholy songs are certainly striking I always enjoyed the songs where reverie pours in around the edges. In the Lost and Found is one of these songs.

The next tune up is "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts," off Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks. Now, I should admit here that I'm in the midst of a Bob Dylan kick and I am really glad that this song came up, but it's also a tune of his that I'm a little new to, so I'll just say it is an 8-minute journey worth taking. The plodding rhythms, bizarre lyrics, and irresistible story hang together to form the musical equivalent of a visit to your neighbor's backyard trampoline. Even if you just bounce up and down tentatively you're far from sitting still feeling blue.

"The cabaret was empty now a sign said. "Closed for repair"
Lily had already taken all of the dye out of her hair
She was thinking about her father who she was rarely saw
Thinking about Rosemary and thinking about the law
But most of all she was thinking about the Jack of Hearts."

It's over now. Great song. Sure to be a regular listen for me, even well beyond my Dylan phase.

Oh, shuffle, you did your magic there didn't ya!?! "Don't let money change ya! Da de da dadadeda da de da dadadeda" and with that Blackalicious' "Deception" (Nia) kicks in. There's something just inexplicably great about this track. It's got an old-skool rap delivery, especially in the verses and while there are many ways that the allegory gets laid down a little thick, it's still enjoyable if only for the chorus that repeats the same warning that starts the song. Simple, enjoyable, classic? Some might say yes. You might count me as one.

Beck's "Paper Tiger" (off Sea Change) is next, a Dave Liss favorite, but tonight it's a little more mellow than my mood. Still, I didn't skip it in the time it took me to type up this little, "I'm going to move on." While I was typing I was pulled into the remarkably well combination of a moderately funky bassline, some well delivered orchestration, and a consistent beat that stays back but holds it all together. Beck plays some usual tricks, with voice mod effects pulling into the chorus at various places, but it's funny, this song makes me think something that popped into my mind during Elliott Smith and that is this:

Both of these guys use the tools that other musicians can't handle so well. Elliott Smith has the whole emo toolbox (and toolbox was chosen for a reason here) but he doesn't smother you in goppy fake ugly sad whatever it is that makes that whole game so played out. By the same token Beck uses so many tools that others simply can't handle well, and even on a song I thought I would skip he uses them to pull you in and treat your ears every time. Or that's, at least, what he does for me.

"Forget the Flowers" a song off Being There, which I will simply describe as some simpler Wilco from a simpler time. I picked up this double disk in High School and was wooed by the Sesame Street styling of the song, "Outta Mind, Outta Sight." These two discs are chock full of great reasons why Wilco is still associated with alt-country even after all their (wonderful in my opinion) noisy experiments. Banjo and all!

Wow... I think this post has run its course. I'm going to run off, but not before I at least rattle off the next few choices brought to you by the joy of ipod:

Pavement's "Shady Lane," off Brighten the Corners [so fantastically good I just couldn't tell you all the ways, even if I gave this song its own whole paragraph]
"Holiday" by Weezer off Weezer, the Blue Album... wow, the songs I love are really some songs that I truly love. Who rated these top rated? Oh wait! That was me. wow... this post is becoming crap right quick.
"Let's Explode" by Clem Snide off The Ghost of Fashion. Great lyrics, "love is only for the lovely - and such a glamorous thing to waste - wait, I have to fix my makeup..."
and... last but not least:
"Punk Rock Girl" by the Dead Milkmen. Ah, the shout-out to Zipperhead, "If you don't got mojo nixon, then your store could use some fixin!"


encore? Yeah, right.

Here it is anyway:
"Dynamite" by the unbeatable unbelievable Roots Crew ... nothing like closing out a post with these sweet sounds.

Weekend Activities pt. 2

Come Out At Night, originally uploaded by Chambo25.

I started to write a post that I then decided was becoming long, rambling, and generally boring. It died, now you get a short post with a new picture I really like. More text soon, or at least some more photos I like.

Weekend Activities

Afternoon Hike Frozen Water Bottle, originally uploaded by Chambo25.

So... last weekend I was out in the woods of Pennsylvania and this weekend I'm headed north to Boston to visit a Sci-Fi convention with two great friends of mine from growing up. I'm imagining it should be pretty fun, and I'm hoping it will end up somewhat hilarious. Bottom line, however, is that I am really anticipating capturing some good photos this weekend.

Meanwhile, the above is one of my favorites from last weekend, out in the woods. We had hiked around a good bit and Bill noticed that his water bottle had frozen a bit. Soon after we all stopped and realized many of our bottles had frozen. While Sarah was holding his bottle up in the air, I thought the sunlight coming through the wavy patterns in the ice was quite remarkable, and captured this photo. There's a minimal amount of photoshop manipulation on this one. The color and look of the ice was pretty unbelievable.

FRIDAY!

Kick 01, originally uploaded by Chambo25.

So... I recently ordered some tshirts... on a whim really. This one just came in today, more quickly than I necessarily expected, and between the excitement of the shirt itself (Narwhal riding a segway! Come on, how did I find this genius shirt!?!?!?) and the fact that the weekend is coming I decided I had much fodder for some fun photos.

This is my fav.

TGIF people, T-G-I-F

Hope you have a wonderful weekend as I wander off to play with some friends in the woods.

Looks like

West Park 01, originally uploaded by Chambo25.

So last night it was snowing outside and I decided to try and take some superfun long exposure shots from the front porch here. I wanted to capture the play of snowflakes under the streetlights, and in a sense I did. The resulting images were much different than what I expected for two reasons:

1. the incandescent bulb in the street light created the beautiful orange glow you see, a shade of lighting that my eyes had adjusted to drown out quite a bit and balance into a much more blue-hued tone

2. the exposure was long enough that the flakes I saw drifting downward as individual specks became streaks that almost look like rain.

Still, in spite of the differences between the photos I imagined I would take and what actually came out, I am very happy with this one in particular. If you click on it Flickr gives you an option to view "all sizes" where you can see a much bigger version of it. One thing that becomes clearer at full size is that the green of the street sign actually does read through the orange that saturates nearly the entire frame.

You can also see the snow accumulating on wires, branches etc.

I hope you like this photo as much as I do. Sure, my fingers and toes were a bit chilly when I wandered back inside, but it was worth it! Happy January!

Streaking Pt. 2

Rock Tree 10, originally uploaded by Chambo25.

So I've been uploading more and more of my christmas light photos over at Flickr, and I'll keep doing it because I love these things. I've been a fan of long exposure motion shots for some time now, but this set of pictures from New York has really just been incredibly fun to sort through, and I took a TON!

Anyway, aside from my recent obsession with one particular collection of photos, I've also been working on reigning in some order in my life... organizing, sorting, throwing some things away... you know, the old routine. Everybody's always behind on that stuff, right? Ok, maybe not everybody.

In the middle of all of that I've found time to be blown away by two movies, one that I'm new to, and one that I saw awhile back and liked, but watched again twice in the last couple weeks and now love.

First, the new one, is Once. The film is getting some good press and rightfully so. I had heard about it and was curious, but moved it to the top of my Netflix queue after my friend who recently returned home from 6 years of active duty in the Navy highly recommended it. He said he stumbled across it on a plane and basically couldn't stop watching it. Based on his unexpected recommendation I went in expecting something fairly good, but even with high expectations was impressed by just what a beautifully well done movie it is. The music is excellent, and the story is sort of endearingly awkward in the right ways, and generally a lot of fun. I would highly recommend it.

Next is my recent obsession with Stranger than Fiction, a romantic comedy starring Will Ferrell, Maggie Gyllenhaal (did I spell that right?), Emma Thompson, and Dustin Hoffman. I've got a short list of things I love about this film:
1. Maggie Gyllenhaal
2. The graphic design of Will Ferrell's character's world of obsessive calculation, counting, and analytical thinking. They created this whole system for taking those pieces of this character's inner workings and making them appear visually on screen. It's really very well done
3. Ok, so that was a short list, right? What? Should I have not numbered it since I really only had two items for the list?

Anyway, those are my capsule reviews for today.

This Week's Playlist:
"Kelen ati leen" by Orchestra Baobab off A Night at Club Baobab
"Whole Wide World" by Wreckless Eric off Greatest Stiffs
"Looselips" by Kimya Dawson off Remember That I Love You
"Two Left Feet" by the Halloways off So This is Great Britain?
"16 Military Wives" by the Decemberists off Picaresque
"Theologians" by Wilco off A Ghost is Born
"New Slang" by the Shins off Oh, Inverted World (Classic!!)
"Voodoo Lady by Ween off Chocolate and Cheese

Interesting

I haven't blogged about politics in awhile. It's been mostly pictures, but since the primaries are kicking up I keep getting more and more fascinated by what's going on. Reading through my normal roundup of political blogs today I saw an interesting piece related to yesterday's NH primary. Of course the big question on every political website today has to do with why the pre-primary polls in NH were so inaccurate in relationship to last night's results. One news story presents an interesting and seemingly plausible answer: it has to do with how the election itself was setup.

Read more here, but my summary of what they report in the article is that NH has, in the past, rotated the order of names on the ballot. This year they did not, printing a uniform ballot where the Democratic candidates were listed in alphabetical order starting with Joe Biden (who has dropped out of the race) then Hillary Clinton, and about 21 names later Barack Obama. Now, this alone wouldn't be super interesting if it weren't for the fact that studies by the author of the article linked above have shown that candidates can often get at least a 3% bump in voting based on their placement towards the top of a list on the ballot.

Anyway, that aside, I think yesterday's results in NH are an interesting and healthy development for the 2008 elections, and for America. I think we'll all benefit from having more states weigh in on deciding who the two bigger candidates are, and I hope that this process allows us all to learn more about who the candidates are, how they respond to adversity, what their policy positions, and how we might be able to read their likely approach to leading our nation.

I personally all but dismiss the same questions that cause much hand-wringing especially around Obama's preparedness and experience. I base that personal bias on my own sense that many who are steeped in and attuned to the Washington game due to years of playing it often seem far from my own policy preferences, world-view, and vision for what America should hold up as its ideals. I know getting things done involves compromise, but look at all the compromise congress has done this year, and how much it has caused them to be berated from both their opponents and their own supporters. I really do hope this election might bring some substantive change, in the form of a new vision, a new day where we can think as a nation about the future we want, and how we can get ourselves there... building new and interesting coalitions to make change happen, and thinking creatively about how to strengthen all our systems, both the truly hurting ones (let's see... healthcare, education...) and the ones that work well now but seem in danger down the road.

Wow, that was quite a ramble. Thanks, New Hampshire, for getting me churning there. Congrats to all the Hillary supporters out there. This Obama supporter can't wait to see what the next few months bring.

Streaking

Rock Tree 05, originally uploaded by Chambo25.

The last few days I've been holed up in my room, trying to get over a cold/flu/general nose-running throat-aching crappiness. Welcome to 2008, right? Anyway, it's funny how when you spend so much time in or close to bed the world seems to streak on past you. Nothing stops because your head is clogged up and you sleep until noon. Perhaps, however, this is a reassuring thought more than anything else. Who would want for things to screech to a halt because they felt crappy?

Ok, enough about that. Moving on, the photo above is one I took in NYC last week while I was breezing through with Joseph, Michael and Satako. The colors are from Christmas lights on the tree at Rockefeller Center. I took a whole series, and I am planning to post a bunch, but of the ones I've pulled through photoshop and up into the internets this is my favorite so far. I like the short uptick before the streak to the left. I like it a lot. Most of the others have a more elegant curvature to the movement of the light streaks, but this one has such an fascinatingly linear shape. As I've looked at this pictures and the others I snapped like it, I've come to enjoy an almost textural element that I think is produced by the varying density of lights in different areas of the image. There's something ghostly there. Anyway, this is a photo I was particularly excited to get up onto the blog.

As I continue to hydrate, rest, and try to make my way back to the land of the living, I hope that you are having a great week, and look forward to getting into such shape that I'll be getting a little more fresh air and sunlight soon!

Until then, at least I've got a ton of interesting photos backlogged for editing and upload!

Cheers!

++ John

Climbing the CN tower

Climbing the CN tower, originally uploaded by Chambo25.

Wow... let me tell you, last year ended with a bang. Just as the days were growing limited and there appeared little chance for new adventure and excitement, along came Joseph, Satako, and Michael to say, "Hey, let's go to Canada."

Sure, when you heard that you might have said, "but there are so few days in which to drive all that distance!!!" And you would have had a valid point. Fortunately for me, I ignored the little voice in my head saying, "this is crazy, and said Yup! That sounds like a plan."

The next day we set out on a three-day adventure that would take us from Philly to NYC to Connecticut, to Toronto and then on a whirlwind descent from the northern Canadian Ice Wine Country back down through the deepest darkest reaches of rural New York and home again to Philly mere hours before 2007 was to end.

While in Toronto I climbed the tallest building in the world by hand. See the photographic evidence above.

Cheers, and happy new year!!!

2008!

Petunia and John 04, originally uploaded by Chambo25.

Wow, I've now been blogging for 3 calendar years... sure it still only adds up to around a year and a half, but as I was thinking up a first blogpost for the year that was the first thing that crossed my mind.

Also, seemingly notable to me right now is that I've been doing a boatload of traveling in the past couple weeks. In the month of December I spent time in Connecticut, Boston MA, New York City, Atlanta GA, Burlington VT, Philadelphia PA, Toronto CA, and soon I'll head back to CT. It's been quite a whirlwind end to the year, and has me feeling like I constantly am in need of a nap.

Whew. Time to rest a bit, edit and upload some photos, figure out what this New Haven place is actually about, and focus in on some work I've been pushing aside as I jaunted around to various places.

January is a good time for that sort of thing, right?

To anyone and everyone I've seen, I hope you have a great start to your year, and if I missed you in my travel-crazed frenzy, perhaps we can catch up soon.

In store for 2008 on The Best Way to Have a Good Idea is To Have Lots:

* Many new and exciting photos
* Reviews of Songs or albums
* Guest bloggers
* Political commentary

So... basically... more of the same, except for the guest bloggers thing... that's a new idea. We'll see how it goes.

Got an idea? Why not blog it here!?!?!