Pretty much only one person in my life will get this title. He doesn’t read this. But he might google that phrase some day. I sure hope so. Mr Jones, if you find this email me immediately.
The new job has been getting in the way of this blog. Thank God. So posting here has been light and will probably continue to be. Thank God. At least until I get a real handle on things and remember how to juggle this old thing along with a full time life.
So there is your quick personal update from hubs. Possibly the last fro a little while. Thank God.
I love pinball. It’s physical. Getting to push around the machine. Slam my hips into it just hard enough to avoid the tilt – but still manipulate the game. It’s frustrating in the good kind of way, like a puzzle. It takes concentration and a little muscle.
As a child I grew up playing pinball at Celebrity Sports Center and actual arcades. I rediscovered it my junior year in college. I played a lot of pinball in college. I even won a few contests held at the student center.
A few weekends ago I went to the Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown and had a blast. I played for about five straight hours. Fifteen dollars, all you can play. At some point in the evening they turned out all the lights and the warehouse, filled with 91 pinball machines, transformed into a dizzying blur of flashing lights and loud zoinks, bonks, sirens, and bells. It was like some sort of surreal, geeky Las Vegas. My wrists were killing me by the time the night was through. My evening consisted mostly of this:
Play any of these together, some or all. Start them at any time, in any order. Mix them with the individual volume sliders. Then sit back and get washed over by the B flat ambiance.
A couple of weeks ago (April 23rd) my girlfriend and I went to see the live broadcast of This American Life at the United Artists Denver Pavilions. I’m a huge fan of This American Life but this show was a failure. Mostly the theater was a failure.
First off tickets prices were $20. Way too steep for anything on a movie screen. Technical difficulties abound and the entire audience missed the entire first segment of the show. Since it was a live telecast there was nothing the theater could do. Every paying customer was given a free movie voucher at the end of the show, but with a value of about $7 this was only a third of the actual ticket price paid.
What we did see was great though. And if you missed it you can download the episode online or go see the encore event on May 7th. Unfortunately I would recommend against spending your hard earned dough in this way, donate it to your local public radio instead.
One of the highlights of the live episode was this video called “Quimby The Mouse” put together by Chris Ware (with music by Andrew Bird, Animation by John Kuramoto).
Chris Ware just makes you want to kill yourself. The more you hurt from his art the better he feels – and that’s what I like about him.
A couple weeks back I posted about an auto-tuned crying baby. Well DJ /Rupture was given a track put together by DJ Champion call “Baako” witch mixes the auto-tuned crybaby from my previous post over a relentlessly simple loop. DJ /Rupture says,
Arnold Zea gave this to me. He got it in Ghana, telling me, “I remember two guys in the studio listening to this music and talking about it as music for body exercise.” It is 12 minutes long and features a baby crying through full Auto-Tune (and cheap reverb). There’s more, but I’m not gonna spoil it here. The sound makes you stop and listen. Oh yeah, it’s over a one-bar hiplife loop.
On the other end of the spectrum, Matt Smith, has created his own sample of an auto-tuned crying baby and turned it into an absolutely wonderful song that will get stuck in your gooey grey matter all day. As of yet, there is just a sample but give it a listen: Matt Smith – Untitled
I can’t make a post like this without mentioning Buzz Clifford’s“Baby Sittin’ Boogie”. This song may be considered the original baby-sound song. The song peaked at #6 on Billboards Hot 100 in 1961 and eventually sold over 1 million copies. I think it’s terrible.
Artifacting is a funny and entertaining blog that covers anything and everything concerning pop culture, art and entertainment. With just a hint of the personal life thrown in for good measure. As of 2007 it is 4 years running. Artifacting takes trips to Casa Bonita, has nicknames for your boo, eats hot dog gum, is sexy (and a little dirty), is banned in china, is all over the map, was underaged and outperformed, sleeps naked, never diets, always double downs on 11, and wonders what’s next.
