Category: CKB

Where I’m at these days

Just noticed an uptick in the RSS feed subscribers so “hello” wherever and whoever you are. It’s probably time to post an update to the “where you can find me” list.

  • Shoot low, they might be crawling: A Tumblr blog of assorted things I ran across that held my attention for more than a moment.
  • Flickr: Hip-hip-hip-hipstamatic!
  • Google+: Setting aside the relative worth of social networking in general, I’m kinda liking the way Google has this set up.
  • Last.FM: It’s rare that I’m not scrobbling anything
  • Twitter: Graffitti and other assorted asynchronous chatting.

Arizona

We went out to southern Arizona for a short July 4th vacation road trip. Things we saw…

Tucson Clouds

The Man In The Moon

On Camera

Águila Negro

The Loft

Tucson Fireworks

On the way out Wednesday night/Thursday morning, some 50 miles or so west of Phoenix, two separate fatal accidents shutdown the eastbound lanes of I-10 for ten hours, creating a 20+ mile line of cars and trucks (we were a couple hundred yards from the front). In all, we were stuck for four and a half hours, but the bigger trucks had to wait.

Spooky scene with hundreds of cars and trucks just parked out in the desert. Felt like every post-apocalyptic story I’ve seen or read. Around the three hour mark you couldn’t help but note which trucks were carrying food and which cars had the weirdest drivers.

Waiting out the accident cleanup

Neighborhood Public Radio’s “In The Air” event at MOCA

Local art collective Neighborhood Public Radio has been hosting a series of “Engagement Parties” at the Museum Of Contemporary Art in downtown LA. Last Thursday the final event, titled “In The Air,” aimed to “[bring] together local noise musicians and sound and performance artists to facilitate a live performance gesture exploring the ways in which we sonically experience indoor and outdoor spaces, and how sound informs our perceptions of our surroundings.”

Operationally, this meant filling up the inside and outside of MOCA with 100 guitarists (a la Glen Branca) and, well, cutting loose with as much drone as you can. No way I wasn’t going to miss this.

IN THE AIR from NPR | Engagement Party at MOCA

(Yours truly rocking the ambience on the right. Azalia Snail on the left – check out her music when you get a chance)

There were some guidelines. Each player was given a small FM receiver, earphones, and a region of the museum to set up in. Regions were then “conducted” via radio but only in the loosest sense: “Region 5, play a low note.” “Region 1 play something rhythmic.” and so on. By 9pm or so, most of the players had moved up to the outside plaza under Nancy Rubins’ wrecked airplane sculpture.

(obliged to mention that I’m in the clip at the 1:01 mark – choose your own description for sound)

The YouTube video gives you a vague idea of what it sounded like, but is missing much of the subtleties… sound waves bouncing off the buildings, puzzled looks from the patrons, trying to fit your sound in between your neighbor’s. Very exhilarating (and honestly transcendent) couple of hours.

MOCA’s Flickr set of the event.

Mother’s Day

My mom's garage

My mom is pretty camera shy and not particularly into the hokeyness surrounding today so I’ll go with this (a picture of her garage): My mom is 85, travels several times a year, and is more car crazy than I am (her current dilemma is how to fit her skis into her new Aston Martin for a trip up to Mammoth).

Point being is that the DNA doesn’t fall far from the tree. Happy Mother’s Day!