Halloween greeting from your favorite furry creature

To celebrate the Halloween season, I thought I’d greet you with this. Creepy and so adorably cute at the same time.

Full Metal Typography

Working with type is intimidating for me. Painful, humiliating, frustrating. I don’t have all the names of the uber-popular fonts memorized, nor can I properly identify them and what works next to them.

I’m doing a large project with the screenplay Full Metal Jacket, and this is definitely putting me in a position to deal with massive amounts of type, often emotionally heavy, in a new way. Hopefully by the end of this project I’ll loose some of this apprehensive attitude. Regardless, I still admire people who have an eye for type, and appreciation of its structure, and infatuation with its form or lack thereof.

Below are some picture from the flat of Oleg Mitasov, from Kharkhov, Ukraine. His eccentric use of type is mystifying and beautiful to me – no holding back, pure expression, essentially his paint, color and texture. Some see graffiti, mental illness, or a mess of a flat – while I don’t wish to copy this in my own place, I do see a certain freedom, and I envy it.

dream vs. reality

…or “lamborghini vs. ford”

It’s about time.  News has it that the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra is getting a new home, designed by KKE Architects.  If you’ve ever been to its stage in the Woodruff Arts Center, it feels more like a closet-turned conference room with a really high ceiling.  Maybe I don’t appreciate its simplicity, but I’ve always felt it’s an apathetic shrug, saying “hey, we’re Atlanta.  at least we got a place to stick a symphony.  now please consider us cultured.”

I hused to frequent the symphony during my undergrad days, but lately there hasn’t been a draw.  I guess after living in St. Petersburg, I got in the habit of stopping by the symphony after class and paying a couple bucks to sit in on any of the great performances.  It was kinda a social gathering place, you’d always see people you know, and just sitting in those historical theaters was well worth it.  Well, now I have Starbucks and an mp3 player.

Perhaps leaving behind the sterile environment that the ASO has been in for decades (aside from performance at Chastian) will help it become more than just a destination for school field trips and a place for the elderly to fall asleep (look around if you go, it’s quite comical to see).  It’s definitely a plus to the north Fulton suburbs – a concert venue in a park that embraces its surroundings – much better than a 1960’s closet.  Hopefully there’s wont be a SuperWalmart sprouting up across the street.

Anyway, check out the design details here, including its “translucent fabric, fan-shaped roof suspended over a steel-framed structural system,” at the Dexigner Design Portal.

All is silent

It seems that the hard drive from my old PC has had itself a barb-b-q party, perhaps grilling up some of those HoMade hotdogs in the pic below.  I’ll admit, I had been neglecting the bugger a bit since the my mac got permantly adhered to my lap, but it had its uses…like one massive storage unit for stuff I had yet to find another place for…like 3 years of music collecting.  Yes, aside from a small selection stored on my MP3 player, and a few of those circular plastic things (CDs?), I had been storing a library full of a ga-jillion different music files.  And now, gone.

While some irreplacable photos and other files are now gone too, I can at least try to start filling my music void.  Despite a good amount of names, there are still many, many musicians out there that I know I won’t be able to remember, those in my unsorted catagories and from countries and underground nooks that rarely see the light of day.  Sad as I am about that, I’m moving forward to try and re-find them, as well as take suggestions for new finds.

So, for anyone out there who has some suggestions for the eclectic, offbeat, and just plain cheesy musical styles, pass it on (I did loose my dear collection of bad early 90’s booty mixes).  It’s pretty quiet here right now…

Putting the ‘ho’ in hotdog

Summer bar-b-q days may be over, but I can’t wait to get me one of these…

Stuck in beef stew/ Gogol Bordello

What the hell is wrong with me? Has apathy taken over? a disinterest in things outside books and design webpages? Just an assumption that nothing outragously fun is in my price range?!

When I was in college, I made a promise to myself that no matter how crazy things got or what money was like (much better then than now, actually), I would go to at least one “real” (involving a little more dinero) show/theatrical event/concert per month (I know, Jessica, if you’re reading this you’re probably cringing at this number). To redeem myself from complete hermit-ville, this did not include parties, club outings (that’s so 1998!), improv shows and artsy exhibits. I also tried to spend a night in a homeless shelter (volunteering, ahem) once a semester, but that’s another story.

ARGH! So last night Gogol Bordello were in town. I’d talked to Pig over a month ago about the show. When our loan trouble began, I dropped any reminders about things happening, and so I did with this. I assumed the tickets would be too expensive and I’d be too busy, someting else something else. In fact, when I went past the Roxy yesterday, there was like a faint little voice in the back of my head, said weakly “Hey, Gogol Bordello, right here in your back yard. Hey, isn’t that cool. You really wanted to go see them. let’s go home now to do laundry.”

So, I went home. I didn’t do any laundry. I erased from my mind that 2 minutes of walking was a show that I really really wanted to see. I wouldn’t even have to park anywhere! But, I kept hoping that the tickets were too expensive, or it sold out really fast.

Of course, today as we wandered by the Roxy, like an idiot I mentioned it

Belka: hey, Gogal Bordello was here last night. it was probably an awesome show

Pig: Right here? the Roxy? Why didn’t you tell me it was last night, we could have gone!

Belka: I’m sure the tickets were to much for the both of us. I have to buy some books for school anyway.

Pig: Did you check? Maybe they weren’t expensive. For all we know, it could have been a free show. At least for Russians.

Belka: Grrrr. <dismal cloud ascends over head>

So, of course tonight I’m trying to see if they will ever be back, or maybe be in NY when I go up in December. Of course, I was curious to look for tickets prices because I just love pouring salt on an open wound…no info on last night’s show…but for upcoming shows there seemed to be a range of $15-26 around the US. $15!!??! At the Roxy?! That would have been like $30 for the two of us, that’s almost what you spend at the movies (sorry, Pig’s gotta have his oversalted popcorn)! I would gladly have given up a trip or two to the ol’ kino for that. Hell, I have Blockbuster and a microwave. But I don’t have a concert hall pumped full of gypsy punk!

Anyway, I gotta kick this overcooked pot of beef strew I’m in and stop assuming everything is against me.

But the book I bought today was pretty expensive…

Michel Gondry + Motorola

Motorola and Michel Gondry have teamed up for a new project together, using Gondry’s spirited, hand-made feel to let viewers “experience” the new technologies of the RAZR2 phone.

The website is worth checking out for all the bonus features – the making of, process book sketches, and interviews – you get a much better idea of the thought process and all that went into making something that is less than a minute in its final form – you know, the stuff most people don’t take into consideration. Anyway, it was a pretty difficult shoot, with everything being mechanical or in-camera effects, but that’s part of what sets Gondry apart.

Oh, and none of this has anything to do with the RAZR accident I blogged earlier.  But it could.  For a small price,  I’m willing to tie in each post to Motorola/Cool phone designs, in one way or another.  So, Motorola, let’s talk…I got loans to pay.

Cellphones and cars

As a stick shift driver, I consider myself pretty talented that I can steer, shift and talk at the same time.  I know there are dangers to cellphones and driving, and I thought I’d heard them all before.  But low and behold, here is yet another way that cellphones can be dangerous when mixed with cars.

Buckhead Warzone

I’m currently researching the Vietnam war for a project in my Type as Mass class – taking the screenplay from Full Metal Jacket and creating something [hopefully] intense, gritty, and substantial with all 81 pages.  Keep you posted.

Meanwhile, I seem to have missed the news that war broke out in my neighborhood.  Yes, it seems about 250 yards from me the Yuppie Redevelopment Forces have bombed the Buckhead Village.  Anyway, this is the view now around Peachtree Road, Pharr and Buckhead Ave.  Guess I should be careful, perhaps our HOA should build a moat around our condo or arm our neighborhood squirrels with Kalashnikovs.  Just an idea.

 Village of Buckhead 2007

 Bombing justified by need for yet another Starbucks location

 

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