Eye Candy

ROSA from Jesús Orellana on Vimeo.


Evelyn Evelyn "Have You Seen My Sister Evelyn" Music Video from Amanda Palmer on Vimeo.

And...

Happy Birthday, Joey Tomorrow! “I ain't got the time/For your peace of mind!"

Gang of four

Vivendi buys EMI for $1,900,000,000.00. Now all recorded music is owned, for the most part, by one of four companies (Vivendi, Sony, Warner and BMG). Almost every recording label is a subsidiary of these four conglomerates.

Art imitates art

photo © respective owner

Separated at birth?

BOOM!, Part II: Indignati

18:28:02 – smoke from the exploded Carabinieri van (maria?) in piazza San Giovanni, photographed from the roof of the Rome office.

Whether you like it or not

Still here, still alive. Working working working... general VFX and the like for a couple of films, of which one i did the opening titles (AmeriQua), plus other dancing baloney graphic things for italian TV and not.

Be back later...

BOOM!

Did i scare ya?

DuPont Imprelis

Simple Google search for the single word "Imprelis", DuPont's chemical herbicide.

As of 1 August 2011, eight of the ten displayed hyperlinks are not marketing/product pages.

From Michigan State University: What to do with Imprelis-affected trees
Also from Michigan State: Imprelis herbicide may injure evergreens
From Mother Earth News: Imprelis, another deadly herbicide, this time from DuPont

If DuPont's EPA-approved Imprelis (aminocyclopyrachlor) is causing said alleged ecological damage (it has yet to be legally proven), what could be expected as far as clean-up goes? What could you possibly do in a contamination situation, if such a situation were to exist?

Drink bottled water and don't eat your garden's vegetables.

Joey

"I'm filling up your H...ehm, SD card...heh heh heh..."
"Thanks!...and killing the battery all at the same time."

Strike terror into their hearts

I realize i'm coming in late on this but...

On 18 May 2011 here at Rome's Termini Station, a statue of Pope John Paul II was inaugurated to not a small amount of controversy and various polemics. I'll leave the search up to you if yr really interested. "Google is your friend," said the idiot who keeps a blog on Google's servers.

Strangely enough, even though i pass near Termini quite frequently (i live within walking distance) i hadn't seen the statue until many weeks later, while i was on (probably) the 75 bus. And this is what i saw (click the pics for a larger view)...

...coming from Piazza dei Cinquecento onto viale Enrico De Nicola...

...and from viale Enrico De Nicola.

Well...! It seriously took me minutes to realize who this new statue was supposed to be, even though i'd seen all of the fuss on the TG and the newspapers/websites. I seriously was thinking of another equally famous personality. And after my brain made the necessary connections, i still said (like many others had), "it doesn't even look like him!" But what i wanna know is what's with the cape?

Anyway, after weeks and weeks of threatening a little guerilla art, i have been dissuaded by two things: i could never pull it off physically and even if i could it's surrounded by surveillence cameras. It wouldn't have been a simple tag-and-run. So without further ado, i present the virtual version of my little piece of urban sabotage...



Works much better in this context, don't you agree?

Selected photos

I dreamt...

...of a song last night/this morning. Upon waking i had the phrase "...hide your madness in jar..." repeating in my head. My brain ran through its semi-vast index of songs, artists and lyrics...and nothing. For some reason i kept thinking it was something off of the "White Album," specifically Dear Prudence, but i knew that was wrong (for some reason i kept playing the Siouxsie and The Banshees version in my head). I then branched off into other territory, hoping to find the answer.

Nothing.

It took the "Answerer of all questions" to relieve the nagging. How sad.

Hard news

FLASH! -- This just in from the Detroit Free Press website...

Detroit bomb squad investigates suspicious garbage bag, finds it's just garbage

And just in case, as in the past, the article "Symes", here's a screenshot of the page...




DFP Staff, i'm sure that Pulitzer is being giftwrapped as we speak! I have got to stop reading the Free Press so often.

Borders Group in liquidation

I just read that Borders Group has filed for liquidation in US Bankruptcy Court yesterday (via the Detroit Free Press). Which i find sad. I remember i loved going to Borders bookstore. I mean it was always a near-religious experience for me. Seriously. I can't explain why. It's not as if it was the first bookstore i'd ever encountered (that would probably be recently-defunct mall staple B. Dalton). Maybe because of its size: from my first visit to the Ann Arbor location in the early eighties to my semi-regular visits to the Southfield bookstore, it just seemed like acres of books! And it seemed as if they covered the gamut of the printed word (which they probably did for the most part). Like some kids going to the ice cream shop, that was me going to Borders. Barnes & Noble?! Why, they're just an imitation of the Borders look and feel!*

The last books i'd bought from a physical bookstore were from a Borders franchise in the Atlanta (i'm pretty sure) airport. At the urging of the cashier i'd even signed up for their emailings. But that was in 2006 and a pretty generic experience, not the Borders experience i'd remembered. Obviously, being on the other side of the world for the last 15-ish years made it difficult to visit them. I eventually found their mailings with their exclusive offers and e-coupons pointless and i eventually unsubscribed. These last few years of books came from an online presence...another online presence...not Borders. Borders without walls, without a physical presence, made no sense to me. It was to be experienced, not just ordered from like a pizza joint. And maybe that was part of the problem.

The article also mentions how changing reading habits (i.e., eBooks) played a part in Borders' closing. Whereas i think this is just management not moving in step with the times, for many years now i've had this...fear...for the future of the printed book. While i can appreciate all the advantages of delivering media in electronic form, it also raises the bar of entry, especially in the matter of books...and reading...and literacy. Not that the closing of the Borders chain has anything to do with that. But i can't help feeling how one is just a signpost for the other.

* I honestly don't know in this case who copied whose style. I was first introduced to Borders before Barnes & Noble had a presence in the Detroit area...and i'm stickin' to that! :P

I did not know that!

As the late Johnny Carson used to say. According to this article on the Detroit Free Press' website, Detroit's People Mover, well, moves about 3,500 riders daily...5,000-6,000 on weekends and even more during special events. (emphasis mine)

Nine tells me (as well as our friend Wikipedia) it costs 50¢ to ride. 50 cents! That's nothing! According to Wikipedia, ...in fiscal year 1999-2000, the city spent $3.00 for every $0.50 rider fare, according to The Detroit News. That's ten years ago and it's still 50¢! I mean, would it be that big a deal to raise it to, say, a dollar? I mean, a dollar! That's still nothing! It's not as if the city couldn't use the fiscal help right now.

Nine says don't give them any ideas!

Cookies

Direct Hit Warning: heavy geekiness ahead.

Okay, there're utmas and phpbbs and apaches, and a plethora of others but...what the hell is this?!...

(No subject)

Listening to: Pete and The Pirates...a lot!

According to the Detroit Free Press' site, today's most popular non-sports-related articles are...

• Police: Man bites off wife's eyelid, chases her with steak knife in domestic dispute
• Feral cat population in metro Detroit overwhelms animal welfare groups, residents
• Kwame Kilpatrick autobiography goes on preorder

...what, i gotta add one of my smart-ass comments to this?

But, just in case, like my link to Detroit's third-place national ranking in bedbugs disappeared, here's a brief rundown...

A 32-year-old Clinton Township, Rahsaan Lavonte Thedford, man could spend up to 10 years in jail if convicted of biting off his wife's eyelid during an argument.

"I find this crime absolutely heinous," St. Clair Shores Police Detective Margaret Eidt said today. "In 18 years of being a police officer and detective, this is the first time I've ever seen a case like this."

Eidt said Thedford's wife called police from her car outside her St. Clair Shores home at 4 a.m. on May 8, Mother's Day.

In the Mother’s Day incident, Thedford is accused of punching his wife in the face when: "He was on top of her, leaned over and bit her eyelid off,” Eidt said.

Police caught him about a block away, trying to climb under a chain-link fence to hide in a yard, Eidt added.

***

By one estimate, there are about 657,000 feral cats in metro Detroit -- that's 16 cats for every seat at Comerica Park. The cat population strains animal control and animal welfare groups, which say they have limited money and space.

***

And as far as the Kilpatrick book...well...celebrity porn is/has been/will be what it is. Famous, infamous...

Ah, and one last link under the most commented section (and the headline says it all)...
New study: You can't live on minimum wage
...well, thanks, Captain Obvious! We love our graphics and so...

***

Moving right along, today is a national holiday here in Italy: the anniversary of the founding of the Italian republic in 1946 as well as the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy. I will also refrain from wisecracks here as well. Here's the BBC's photo...
The link will take you to the BBC Week in Pictures. It's the fifth photo from the left.

...and live from the terrazzo of the Rome office...

And lastly, Feex got her Macbook back from the shop and has finally returned to her digital life. Feexy, i missed you!

Adventures in Gardening #2

Thai peppers from plants I grew from seed. They're about as big as two joints of yr pinky...but, as opposed to my Habaneros, that's about as big as they're supposed be!

Is this thing on?

The Fast's LP The Fast For Sale must have had just come out recently (at the time, 1980) and Frankie says to me, "Didja know that there was a third brother?" And me, "No, really?" "Yeah," sez Frankie in his great gravelly Boston tenor, "Cal Zone!"

I pissed my pants laughin' at that one...and strangely enough, i still do every time i think about it. But i'm like that with certain jokes.

Gee, Frankie should've said he went on to be a pizza chef...! BA-DA-BING!

And i come to find out years later there really was a third Zone brother...but Armand doesn't make for laughs like Cal does.

Grasping at straws

Hey, we're still here! The mother of all idiots and madmen is always pregnant. Here's the only Rapture i know...



Anyway, floating around on the squinternet is a page of a collection of various punk rock records, sub-divided by regions. Well, look what's on the New York page (ya gotta jump down to Jetz...well, hell, now i gave it away!).

I would guess that the single came out May 3, 1980 because of the "catalog number" 5380 (i can't think of any other reason why we would've picked that number), but that can't be right...i would've still been in high school, ergo not in NYC.

Regardless, i do remember that Peter Crowley refused to put that single in Max's jukebox because, thanks to the song Aryan Race, he didn't want anything to do with that Nazi stuff. WHAT?!? We were outraged! April was furious. It was lyrically a piss-take on all that White Power/Nazi bullshit and he interpreted it as promoting that! He probably never even listened to it and just judged it by the title. And me, being young dumb and full of it, it never occured to me for one second that that song could be taken seriously. I remember the first time i'd heard it i fell in love with it! It's a great fucking tune and i still stand by that. I could give a rat's ass about what you think about the lyrics. I know it was a joke. It was just a stupid joke. And as Larry Flynt used to say, if they can't take a joke, I'm fucked.

Some years after my move to the Rome office, upon discovering my chequered past in New York, record collector friends of mine busted my chops about being a Nazi because of that single. But they were just pulling my chain and we all laughed it off.

31 years after the fact, i guess i could see how the title Aryan Race could give some people the wrong idea about us...!

A side note, the single was on our ficticious label Ultramodern Records, a name which i would recycle many more times, but i can't remember if this was the first mention of Ultramodern or not. It's possible that the band we had before i'd left for New York was called The Ultramodern. It certainly was after i'd returned to Detroit. Joey, help me out here!

EDIT 2011-05-23: Joey confirms! According to minutes of awakening hibernated synapses together, Joey says that we had used the name Ultramodern at least as far back as 1980 in a high-school battle of the bands! The rest is for another post.

Adventures in Gardening

Before i continue i must apologize for the lousy quality of these photos.


These are two ripe Habanero peppers. Or at least i believe they are Habaneros (they could be Scotch Bonnets), as they actually are imported from somewhere in Africa, and that's the most information i can glean from the Bengalis i buy them from at the world-famous Piazza Vittorio market here in Rome.


These two babies are freshly harvested Habanero peppers from the plants i grew from seed last year, along with Locotos, Thai chiles and Bangla chiles.

And now, a photo of the four aforementioned chiles with two cherries for scale...

Try not to hurt yourself laughing so hard.

I think the Habanero plant needs more room to grow chiles of any decent size.

EDIT 2011-05-23: Nine sez they'd make great earrings...!