Year: 2001

Boring Plaid Edition

 

Three months ago I was crying in the shower. Blissful ignorance turned to shock, disbelief, grief, outrage, curiosity, disgust, contempt, and finally indifference. Supposedly something even worse is around the corner. I just want to play music again.

Today was the last day of class for the semester and the last two weeks were hell. Last night around 3AM I discovered the internet. How many Pitchforkmedia reviews could I read? The Onion’s most/least essential albums of 2001. It’s frustrating reading about all the great music I’m missing out on. Poverty and dialup still suck.

Rocking Lately

  • Pop
  • Moose Live a Little Love a Lot
  • Trash Can Sinatras “Senses Working Overtime”
  • The Bats Daddy’s Highway
  • The MagickHeads “The Back of Her Hand”
  • Claudine “Think of Rain”
  • Beach Boys Pet Sounds
  • Dan moving to town
  • Possibility of visiting Burt in Cleveland

Sucking Lately

  • Jenn, Paul, Raymond & Parish leaving town
  • Sandi’s near death experience
  • Jeff’s computer
  • Poverty
  • Final project documentation
  • Intermediate C++ class filled
  • Organizing CDs
  • Josh’s old job, new job
  • Everything

Amy Amy L, You Rock So Well

Just an ackward shout out to the Aislers Set’s Amy Linton that will, *will* I say, appear in a song on the long-awaited by 4 people debut and final EP by The Seventeenth Century. We rocked Gainesville for about 3 weeks and, damn it, I’ve let the drum tracks sit in the can while waiting for the right doses of free time, mixing equipment and motivation.. and it’s been over a year now. I’ll settle for motivation I suppose–Britt’s tribute to French disco and Godzuki and Dana’s stories of apartment life shall not go unheard for another year.

Songs

Stephin Merritt I am not, but I have so many ideas I’m losing count. Why am I not playing music right now? N-Sync might suggest the use of a B.F.N. or band formation notice. I’m open to just about anything. What do I have to lose, my dignity? Maybe I’m getting too old. I’m too unhip for the popkids, too young to be in the Pernice Bros, oh, and I live in Gainesville, FL.

A Good Kind of Nervous

 

And so I usher in a new era of not working and not arriving to class on time because of not finding a place to park in the mornings. 3 classes, of which ~60% hold my interest, yield me $1800 in loans to make it to Spring. Will I make it? — Can I curb pop music and Subway consumption in order to pay rent? I suppose I will have to cut back, right after the upcoming Beulah / Mates of State show in Atlanta, of course. I already miss my friends at work (a couple days ago was my last day after almost 2 years there) and my friend Sandi, who now enjoys a healthy commute and adventures in Spanish comprehension in Miami. ¿Cómo sobrevivirá ella la ciudad grande?

This edition of mrclay.org is dedicated to the fantastic Lucksmiths album “A Good Kind of Nervous”. On the last brittle stars tour our routes intersected a couple times and I got a chance to meet 2/3rds of them and trade one of our CDs for one of their shirts. Suckers. In other news I’m loving the new Ivy album “Long Distance”. As always smooth and breezy and they seem to be moving in a more dance-pop direction. Lots of great melody and I appreciate the occasional, cheesy drum-loop.

Music

I promised better bit-rate mp3s soon, and of course I lied, but I do have some songs up my sleeve waiting for the right group to be put together. Even though it was sad to end the brittle stars, the tour was a rejuvination of sorts. If I can get another competent pop band together there shouldn’t be a lack of songs — well maybe words.

Down With OOP

Placing the acronym for Object-Oriented Programming in the title of a Naughty by Nature single should ideally secure me sufficient beatings from both the hip hop and coding communities. My classes in C++ and VB I hope will cover a lot of OOP concepts this semester and I’d like to create some smart objects and methods in javascript to simplify image rollovers and DHTML code. I’m learning more about html forms — the Spanish link above submits two variables to the Babelfish translator CGI “tr” using GET whereas their own forms hides the variables by POST-ing them.

Here are we, with a view of mountains
Staring at the floor for hours on end
There’s a world outside that window
And we’re looking at linoleum instead
Another sunset passes us by
We used to sit on our arses
And stare into the sky

If either one of us could drive
We could drive away
And the times of our lives
Could begin today

Look at us. We’re atrocious
We make a meal of every meal
And we browse through travel brochures
But the grass grows brown around these wheels
Take the tennis ball off the towbar
We’ve come a long way
But there’s so far to go

If either one of us could drive
We could drive away
And the time of our lives
Could begin today
What’s there to decide?
And what’s there to say?
If either one of us could drive
We could drive away

Some things might have to change
I wish there was some furniture
That I could rearrange

–The Lucksmiths “Caravanna”

Feeling Deserted

 

Coming home to Gainesville after touring the west coast, I feel like I’ve crashed. I forgot how much I like touring with friends, playing shows and meeting people along the way. I really miss it already, a lot. I’ve made up my mind to move to the west coast come hell or high water around this time next year. One year reserved for getting in all the education I can before the move, probably to Sacramento. The industry seems to be a bit more stable there, and even if the weather isn’t quite S.F., every step outside into Florida heat infuriates me lately. So this year will be about preparation, hopefully seeing a lot of my friends that I have to leave behind, and convincing the least anchored ones to jettison this state as well. If anyone needs a roommate in Sacramento Fall 2002, let me know.

Web Geek News

I’ve begun reworking the tinybadpictures.com layout (working model mrclay.org/newtbp) and it’s coming along nicely I think. The new one will be valid HTML & CSS, which will likely force me to serve NN4 its own hacked style sheet like on the brittlestars.org, but the code is smaller, beautiful and easy to modularize and update. Although I’ve banished the annoying frameset we had for page centering, I think I’ll now use an inline frame to display the big 30-40k pictures so they don’t all have to preload, this will also allow us to have more pics per gallery page. It also means having to provide a seperately generated version for users w/ clunky old browsers. PHP to the rescue again — I can make a link that will cause ?show=all to be appended to all gallery URLs which with deliver a more accessible version w/ all the pics on the page. So my work is cut out for me.

I noticed that the original mrclay.org blue looked a lot darker on the PCs at school so I have to wonder if Photoshop’s gamma adjuster is too light. Then I have to wonder, does anyone really care?

E-bay Auctions

1997 Brutal Scars Promo Poster OOP

Printed before Stella Scar’s dramatic dismissal and 3rd autobiography. Also features a shaven Josh Scar and the tentative title of the BS single released as “Shortcut to MyHeart.txt”. Fans will also recognize this title as the subtitle of Josh’s 2nd biography of 1998. I was told this might be very rare — reserve is 50.00USD.
48″x48″ laminated in cardboard tube
Extended until tomorrow 8PM E.S.T.!
[Image of Josh and Estelle posed in a very sensational teen-pop promo poster]

Featured Artwork

This obscure Warhol piece featured Clairecords empire founder and Studio 54 local Daniel Sostrom.
[5 images of Dan jumping, slapping himself high-5 on various colored backgrounds]
“Five High Fives” (1978) Colorforms ® on detached refridgerator door 36″x62″x5″.