pssssst! brainfag is retired! i'm now at natebeaty.com

 

A brief respite from the code gruel

posted in Home Jabber on August 28, 2005

I'm listening to a good interview with Craig Thompson on WNYC. It made me laugh that Craig linked from dootdootgarden.com to his interview with "listen to my nasal-y Kermit the Frog voice", where I called my "interview" voice on Noboto phlegm-gurgled. I think I have him beat with stuttering umms and embarrassingly weird-sounding voice on tape, but luckily I was chopped into bits for my interview.

I recently unearthed an 11-year-old tape I recorded while I was on mushrooms, and decided to transfer it to digital eternaldom (assuming I don't drop my external drive again). I also found a tape I recorded one day of my 2 month temp stint at Sears Home Repair dispatch on 122nd and Division, which is about 8-years-old. I taped myself calling a bunch of people to reschedule the repair of garage door openers, mowers, treadmills and dishwashers -- many of whom had been rescheduled a few times before and were taking days off work to be there when the repairman arrived. Needless to say, they weren't pleased to hear from me. The one other ancient relic I found is my old friend JJ and me rambling under the influence in the Spam Van, which we were living in on Orcas at the time. This one weighs in at 10-years-old. I guess it makes sense these are all from about the same time, as I was prone to carry around my recently purchased, piece of crap cassette recorder which I bought at something like a 5-dollar-store.

I'd like to put an edited piece of these old tapes together. Even though they all seem from radically different periods of my life, they do tie together. Plus I've always wanted to do a radio-like piece, and this seems like adequate impetus to get on that. Maybe I'll even seque with some fantastic Sounds of Natron.

Scott loaned me his miniDV camcorder, and I've started playing around with that. Video is fun, but I always feel a bit lost working with it. I don't know exactly what I want to capture. The one thing I always want to do is some sort of steadycam on my bicycle. That'd be cool.

My mom delivered a giant load of ancient garb from my Uncle Carl's basement. There's a wide variety of stuff, some of it very cool (I love old western shirts), and some that's pretty hilarious & godawful. I'm all about old clothes, but the '70s had a very frightening concept of style at times. Often they just went all out, and were apparently stoned out of their mind when they did. This photo isn't a very good example of that, but if you look close, that shirt has a gallery of playing card characters from the face cards (the source of that term just hit me when I wrote that..)

OK, back to the code gruel!

2 comments on this entry

BikeCams rule. Maybe rig up a mini-camera on yr bike helmet, like that guy in NYC? Reduces the vibration to not have it attached to the bike frame, methinks.

Joseph 8/29/05
 

Scott had fashioned some sort of homemade steadycam, which I've yet to see. But I was thinking that could be attached somehow to the bike...

I always find myself riding fast with headphones on feeling like it would be the coolest thing to watch on cinema. I don't know how many movies have effectively conveyed how cool it feels to ride a bike fast.

The first movie that comes to mind is Ice Storm when Christina Ricci's mom watches her riding down the street. I love that movie, one of my favorites. Athough it's not really attempting to capture the first-person element of bike riding (which I'm sure Ang Lee could do if he felt the urge).

Nate 8/29/05
 
 

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