Goin back to Boston

Chowda, originally uploaded by Chambo25.

for like the 10zillionth time in the last few months.

Should be good.

Quick trip

Friday night through Saturday evening, methinks.

To quote the great Mayor Quimby, "CHOWDA! Say it, Frenchie, CHOWDA!"

OBollywood!

Wow... thanks to Wonkette, yet again, for bringing amazing things into my life (and now yours!). If you haven't seen this, and apparently it's been floating around out there for awhile now, you should check it out!



Put a little Bolly Obama in your day!

WoW!

My brother sent this my way today:

Garfield minus Garfield

Pretty remarkable stuff!

Very very very cool

A friend helped put this together, and another friend emailed me the link, so I couldn't help but post. Check this out, and pass it on, or hey, why not invite people to check it out here? No matter how you do it, this is one creative and beautiful initiative that more folks should know about way beyond NYC. I have a feeling they will soon.

Enjoy!

Frozen Tundra

Whalley Ave 01, originally uploaded by Chambo25.

the rain is washing away the snow
or at least most of it

has been very wet in CT of late

splish

splash




sploosh

Amazing? Well... even the rumor is amazing.

Mittens, back in the action? Check it.

Supersweet.

New McCain Scandal?

Interesting piece here on something that might otherwise be a technicality if it didn't involve the guy who sponsored campaign finance reform in the Senate. If folks read this and have thoughts send them my way. I'm kinda processing the info myself and just thought I would pass along what AmericaBlog had to offer:

John McCain's Other Scandal...

Let me tell ya a little story 'bout Obi Kanobi

This girl is awesome. Don't know much about Star Wars? Find out a bit here. Know a lot? Learn how to summarize Episode IV in style.



Pretty amazing, right?

Melting Away

Melt 01, originally uploaded by Chambo25.

Last week we were slammed by snow here in Connecticut. I was actually out on the roads Friday morning around 8am, and that was a completely ridiculous activity. That aside, it became quite the winter wonderland here... and now, a few days later, it is all melting. This afternoon I went around outside and snapped some fun photos of the melt... some came together well, others not so much. Here you can see some icicles melting off the gutter of our house.

Xerox Will Be Okay

Fascinating debate on the Democratic side last night, largely because it was kinda different than I expected, really. Perhaps fascinating is an overstatement unless you're a pundit who gets paid to act like these things are incredible every time around. Anyway, what caught me was the fact that Hillary goes after Barack on the plagiarism "issue," which I'll put in quotes because I think it's complete crap to even go along with the game that pretends it was an issue to begin with. But anyway, I digress, interesting that the xerox line was followed by a closing where Hillary completely cribbed John Edwards' line about how the candidates will be okay once this is all over, but how he worries about whether America will come out okay in the end. Interesting interesting interesting.

Thoughts?

Feelings?

Ramblings?

Do Not Shake It

Do Not Shake It, originally uploaded by Chambo25.

Seriously, just don't. They mean it so much that they wrote it in two colors!

This kind of signage might be my favorite kind.

Here I am, blogging the night away, and I thought I would use this foolishly late post to talk about two things: Music and more music.

A few months back my good friend Liz (whose art I saw Tuesday... and was blown away! I had seen it before, but WOW!) referred me to the music blog Gorilla VS Bear... which is just a happy little repository of musical randomness. I've started paying more attention to them lately and really appreciating how often they supply links to mp3s from interesting new acts. Well, they've done it again!

They recently pointed out that if you check out the website for SXSW (South by Southwest, an incredible annual indie music festival) you can find links to mp3s from many of the acts in this year's lineup.

This wonderful resource has provided some happy new songs from bands I didn't know such as:"

"Fools," a track by the Dodos

"Lucini" by Camp Lo

and the wonderful "Skipping Stones" by mom (great band name there, kids!)

Fun happy new sounds for the middle of the night!

Art, Art and (art)Work

So... today, for me, is all about Art, Art, and (art)Work.

I've started off my day listening to some Art Blakey, great of Jazz drumming, contemporary and collaborator with Monk, Coletrane, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, and so so so many others. What a soundtrack for my caffeinated morning! Mmmm mmm mmm mmm. Honestly, I should do this every day. I can't recall if I've made much of anything in the way of Jazz music recommendations here, but if I haven't Art is it. Man oh man. I'm completely lacking any sort of descriptiveness here when I try to say how good it is. It just is.

Perhaps as I shift into afternoon I'll go for more Monk. We'll see.

So Art #2 involves my plans for this evening. I'm excitedly hopping a train into NYC this afternoon to check out my friend Liz's work in a show at Parsons, the New School for Design. I'm excited about this outing for a number of reasons. On a basic level I'm excited because I need to make more outings like this one. I'm excited to see some interesting art, to get into the city, and most of all I'm excited for Liz.

So, now you've gotten through the most exciting art of my day. The last art is also very exciting in its own way. Today I'm working on designing some images for this healthcare-related project we're doing at work. Basically I'm taking concepts and trying to sketch them out into icons. We'll see how it goes, but I'm pretty happy to be doing that as work!

...and now I should get back to it!

Do Words Matter?

"Martin Luther King didn't stand on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and say, 'Go home everybody. The dream is deferred, false hopes. You need a reality check.' There is a moment in the life of every generation, when that spirit of hopefulness has to come through, if we are to make our mark on history..."



Thanks to Andrew Sullivan's blog. That's where I first saw this video, the last 10 minutes or so of Obama's recent speech in Wisconsin.

So FAST! Like a bear or a puma...

Bowling Motion, originally uploaded by Chambo25.

Somebody call Dick Cheney!

Ok, wait, nobody call Dick Cheney. But that remains one of my favorite moments still from Will Ferrell's now classic White House West impersonation of George W. Bush. If you haven't seen it, check it out here.

Meanwhile, I don't know about you, but my weekend flew by! The photo above is from a recent visit to Boston, and I've actually been back to Boston since this candle pin bowling expidition, if you want to talk about time flying. Not this weekend, though, I was in New Haven all the weekend long. I did a bit of tidying around ye olde apartment, ran some boring old errands that started with a three item list and ended up taking over 4 hours out of Saturday.

Best of all, however, was Saturday night's trip to see Evil Dead 2 in downtown New Haven. Apparently there's this series that I believe is called Insomnia Theater, and as part of it they were showing the Bruce Campbell/Sam Rami classic. My roommate Andy and I took it in, and it did not dissappoint. It was tons of fun to see this Groovy B-horror classic on the big screen.

Well, now I'm off to continue my restful weekend by getting some shut-eye in preparation for what promises to be a somewhat hectic week.

Settle in this weekend, kick back, and enjoy a nice cold Obama

This appears to be the week of me picking up Wonkette content (Kenyans find Obama,'Really strong and very cheap...", so thanks to them for this great video of a CNN report about how Senator beer, a popular and cheap beer has been renamed Obama by Kenyans. Enjoy

TGIF

Wow... it's Friday, so get yourself out there and party like a Belgian who thinks he's a penguin.

Say what?

You know, like this guy:



via Andy's Blog

Caught in the Rain

Rainy Wednesday 02, originally uploaded by Chambo25.

Here's another fun picture from my rainy expedition yesterday. My post title is also the name of a reasonably fun and good song by Preston School of Industry, a band that spun out of the wreckage of Pavement.

HOORAY to the return of Photoblogging!

Video: The Folly of Attacking Iran

Holy day-of-posts Batman! Sorry, I can't stop finding things I want to post today. I was on Tom Tomorrow's website, This Modern World and while wandering around I took the 6 minutes required to watch this video that provides a super brief but interesting introduction to the history of America's involvement in Iran's affairs during the 20th Century. The information in the video provides a fascinating backdrop for the current debate about Iran, and a frightening counterpoint to the trumped up rhetoric of the administration. Now don't get me wrong, I think the situation is complex, and one of the things I would say to the credit of the video's producers is that I feel that's where they leave it at the end of 6 minutes. To present something brief that really strongly asserts the idea that this situation is complex and deserving of real care, thought, and delicacy is a pretty remarkable thing. If you have a minute or 6 check it out and leave me a comment with your thoughts.

Rainy Wednesday

Rainy Wednesday 01, originally uploaded by Chambo25.

I was playing with shutter speed for photo class today and snapped this photo. I wish the sharpness was a little better, but I kinda love it.

Crappy weather can breed great things, I suppose, and while the story of crappy weather resulting in breeding is an old one, I'm very happy with the new and happy drippiness of this particular result.

Black Velvet

So I've been reading a bunch of Wonkette lately, and if you're at all interested in politics then I highly recommend doing the same. The snarky hilarity cannot be matched. Anyway, they recently made mention of some rediculous velvet portraits of administration officials in a post that linked to an ebay store where such paintings are sold. I hopped on and was amazed by the other characters portrayed in this black velvet jungle of... awesomeness? You be the judge.