When I visited in May in the run up to moving here, I spotted this tag on a garbage can in Greenpoint.

Womp Womp!

Since then, I’ve seen Jim Joe’s handiwork everywhere, and I’ve tried to capture it every time I can.

So, who is Jim Joe, you ask?

According to this link at Subway Art Blog, he’s

“…a graffiti artist, currently hyperactive in New York City. He has made quite a name for himself with his simple, sometimes humorous writings, especially in the Lower East Side and East Village, where his tag is ubiquitous. He first caught the attention of Subway Art Blog in February for hitting up the Essex Street station on the J train.”

Fascinating. He’s got a website here, and is also on Twitter. The Subway Art Blog link above has the most comprehensive info I’ve seen so far.

You can see my photos by clicking on the Flickr badge above or here if you’re lazy.

I’ll be posting more as I see them. But if you spot any, please feel free to send along at staff@obviatemedia.net!

I just finished Eating Animals. I’m not entirely sure how to feel. Jonathan Safran Foer doesn’t compel you to become a vegetarian as much as he urges the reader to consider what they’re actually eating before they eat it. I get that. I appreciate that.

Admittedly, I’m the worst of the worst. I’ll eat any two-bit meat product I see from a fast food joint. If not that, it’s something frozen. I don’t care. It tastes good, it’s cheap and it’s convenient for the nights where I don’t feel like cooking something at home. (When I say ‘the nights when I don’t feel like cooking, I mean ‘pretty much every night’.)

In my mid-twenties, I’ve noticed a change in my digestive system. I’m constantly getting ill from the foods I eat, both with immediate symptoms or flu-like viruses that occur every three to four months. More often than not, these are meat dishes. Maybe it’s stress, or maybe it’s the shit-covered, drug-pumped products I’m eating. After reading that book, I wouldn’t be surprised.

Listen. I’m not going to stop eating meat. I like the taste. I’ve tried alternative vegetarian and vegan meat products, and although they taste pretty good, I don’t think I could sustain an entire diet on them. It’s just not the right decision for me.

Here’s what I hope to do. It’s not in any way a guarantee. I’d like to make smarter choices at meal time, especially when I’m out. There are plenty meatless options in the city (noodle dishes, pizza, so on and so forth) that are completely acceptable and filling. When it comes to meat, I’d like to do some research on some of the farms in the book that allegedly practice more humane treatment and not package food that’s clearly unsafe for consumption. Maybe I can eat some of that.

The problem is that’s not entirely practical, and can get expensive very quickly. That’s something I cannot afford to do.

So, we’ll see. Maybe this book was the wake up call or the push in a healthier direction. I’d like to get sick less often. Honestly, convenience almost always wins over what’s ‘better’ for me. That’s sad, and that’s something the book argues over and over. I’m glad I read it, but when it comes to some concrete change, it will come much smaller than what I’d consider ideal.

Imagine losing your job without any idea of what to do next. Well, other than looking for another job. There’s also that romantic idea of moving somewhere tropical, living off the grid and enjoying what’s around you. It’s fun, but not something that’s easy to do with bills and responsibilities in the way. Not for Houses. They just took off.

It’s an admirable, albeit unsustainable idea. I’ve always dreamed of doing what they did, but never had the guts to see it through. It seemed on the whim, and one enormous leap of faith. Not much later, they were working and living in Papaikou, Hawaii, learning the basics of sustainable living.

More often than not, this lifestyle does not work out for most people. But Houses are not most people. After finally running out of cash several months later, they returned to Chicago, but not empty handed.. With them, they had a gorgeous snapshot of their time on the island, All Night, their debut on Lefse, due next month.

Rarely do I hear a record so elemental and effortless. Its title track is the sound of those first few moments of waking up on a spring morning while rays of sunshine bleed through the blinds.  Other moments are dewey eyed and bleary, like taking a long nap in the grass. Perhaps the freshness of these moments is best exemplified with “Endless Spring,” a glistening pearl where frontman Dexter Tortoriello’s vocals mesh beautifully with the sounds alongside them. The same goes for the harmonies provided by Houses’ other half, Megan Messina. This is consistent throughout: never once on the disc do their vocals feel put-upon. They’re just as organic as the field recordings they made in Hawaii.

These moments are bountiful on All Night. There’s “Soak It Up,” sounding devastatingly like a late Arthur Russell composition, “Wash,” with its deliberate rhythm would make David Byrne proud, and of course, the sweeping, resplendent surge of “Sleeping” and “Sun Fills”.

With that final fade, we’re back to the beginning again, if you see it that way. I don’t. It lacks a beginning and end point. It just simply exists. It was always there, just captured and put to tape at the right moment. That’s doesn’t happen too often in music, and when it does, like All Night, it’s something incredible.

——

Houses – Endless Spring (mp3)

Houses – Soak It Up (mp3)

Tumblr: http://housesmusic.tumblr.com

Some kids grew up loving cartoons.

I was not one of them. Okay, maybe a handful, but I couldn’t sit there all day and watch them. Still can’t, and that’s probably why ‘Adult Swim’ holds little appeal to me.

Instead, what fascinated me was the news. Those people were my super heroes. Allison Rosati. Art Norman. Brant Miller. Any of the WMAQ anchors, really. They were also the appetizer for the main course – The “Today” Show.

That’s irregular for an eight year old. As was reading books about the Presidents of the United States. The only real ‘normal’ thing I liked was Power Rangers, and if that wasn’t on, I would focus my attention on the forced camaraderie between the bubbly Katie Couric and the dour Bryant Gumbel. They didn’t seem like they particularly liked to work together, but it was still so inherently watchable. Maybe it was them, or this young news desk anchor – Matt Lauer, or the weather guy, Willard Scott. Instead of talking about the temperature, he seemed to show more and more pictures of centenarians.

My heroes had a lair. It wasn’t secret though. You could see it from the street. Studio 1A, Rockefeller Plaza, New York City. Just peering right in like a fishbowl.

Fishbowl. What was that like? I was already in the bowl, with the anchors, looking out. They’d talk, and I’d listen. But what was it like out there?

I’d been to New York City on several occasions before moving here. I’d visited the studio on several occasions, but never when my totem program was broadcasting. I’d had chances before – but I’d usually be too tired from the day before or plans would run in to each other.

Then I moved here. I willed myself out of bed to get to go a few weeks ago.

It was early when I reached Rockefeller Center that morning, roughly six-thirty. Manhattan was oddly quiet, a few business types shuffling here-and-there, street vendors just setting their carts up, and the Radio City Music Hall neon sign to my left an unfamiliar grey. It was so early that they had yet to turn it on.

Arriving at the studio was disorienting. There weren’t that many people waiting. The square made with barricades was peppered with high school-aged girls on class trips, middle-aged midwestern moms with homemade pastoral prints on their shirts and impossibly upright haircuts – these people, severely midwestern – not like where I’m from, and the older men behind them holding their bags as they scramble to take pictures of some no-name newspeople shuffling in and out of the studio. This seemed a far cry from the show’s Couric-Lauer heyday, or whenever a ‘Summer Concert Series’ event takes place.

This was disappointing. It’s hard to explain what to feel after you’ve been waiting for something so long, and then it suddenly happens. It’s as if every reflex or predetermined decision you’ve made just falls like a Jenga tower, and you’re processing so quick that you completely forgot what made you want to do it in the first place. It’s awkward. You’re hyper aware of your surroundings. Even though you were so excited, you suddenly feel wrong about being there. That was my ‘Today’ experience.

Minutes before the show was about to air, Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira showed up on a live feed doing camera tests. It felt voyeuristic. These were natural movements by people that my brain was not accustomed to seeing in this way. On my television, they move for the benefit for the camera. Here, watching them perform something innocuous, like satisfying an itch, seemed downright strange.

When the show went to air, I was deflated. I’d waited nearly two decades for THIS. Standing out in the heat with a bunch of strangers, hoping to catch a glimpse of these people that inhabited my screen every morning. They finally came out around 8 am – first Al Roker, then Matt and Meredith. Lauer played it cool with the group of high school pixies in front of me, small talking about where they were from (Iowa), and one woman screamed as she had her picture taken with Lauer. Another scrambled to get her camera out and babbled about it being her birthday. He made a show of faux enthusiasm. Then a few minutes later, they were gone.

I made it about an hour before the heat got the best of me, then I tired and returned home. By then, the city had come alive with people. The signs were on, and car horns were honking ad infinitum. As I boarded the subway, I thought, “These people weren’t my heroes. They really were just like everyone else.” What made them special is that they were in that fishbowl, separated from the rest of us. Isolating them from the weirdness outside.

It also made me think: it takes a particular type of person to have that job and then have the energy to give time to people who, like me, just see them as talking heads on a television screen. They don’t consider that these people have lives, families and other things to do outside of a television studio. Instead, they are designers, tailoring a reality for us each morning.

I don’t think I need their services anymore.

Check out this amazing logo by Ashley Elander for The Eternal Mixtape Project! Still in the dark? The rules and place to enter are here.

This is a project that I have been working on intermittently for years. Now, it’s something I want to put in action.

It’s called The Eternal Mixtape Project.

From when I was in elementary school up until the eighth grade, I didn’t have much use for music. However, when I got “Experience Hendrix: The Best of Jimi Hendrix,” when I was thirteen, my world completely changed.

I turn twenty-five this year. I feel that’s a good time to take stock of what’s happened in my life as I hit the quarter century mark. Why not look back on it with the songs that shaped me?

So, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to assemble a list of every song that’s meant any significance in my life thus far.

I want you to do it too.

Send it to us. Let’s hear your story. That’s the only catch. There needs to be a substantial story (at least a paragraph long) attached to each song that you must write along with it.

They’re due Saturday, March 20 Wednesday, March 31 by 12:00 AM CST. Sign up by placing a comment below, and when you’re done, e-mail the list to eternalmixtape@obviatemedia.net. They’ll all be listed on the site, and a prize will be awarded to the person who best exemplifies the idea of the project.

One more thing. There’s no song limit. It will be as long as it needs to be. Your life can’t be dictated by just a number. It’s all about the experiences you have.