Video Break #2

There was time to spare today. Just briefly enough to gloat in it. Just briefly enough for dessert and long breakfasts.
And now there's just barely minutes of time that I have before the last class of my day, before the thunderstorm breaks, and the shoes are kicked off. Already skipping ahead in thoughts to Friday afternoon.


Take a gander at this video I found while researching the 60's (for scholastic reasons for once) It's got Johnny Depp as Jack Keroac...I was going to save it for later, but why wait with a good thing?


Weekend events (lots to cover):

-Thurs Oct 2nd- "Are your Ears Blind?" multi-media performance at 8pm in Ruth Marder, CFA. Discounted tickets for students.

-Fri Oct 3rd- REVEL dance party at Fletcher's returns (strictly 21+, very generous drink specials).

-Sat Oct 4th- "Parade of Gold" along York road by campus, for local Olympic swimmers Micheal Phelps and Katie Hoff. (**part of York, & Burke roads closed for it!!!)

-Sat Oct 4- The Hint, Cities, Oh! the Story, Fairgreen, Silent Film, and Ever Since Ebbwood, at St Johns Hamilton in Parkville. Great local lineup, say your favorite at the door for cred (hm, what'll be mine? hah), and a few of these guys are in the process of recording-so catch them now before new legs of tours start soon. Tickets at door only, starts at 5:30.

-Sat Oct 4th- Last day before Jim Dine (free!) exhibit closes at the BMA. Need to make it there myself.

-Sun Oct 5th- TU Homecoming Concert ft T.Pain, doors at 6pm, limited only to TU students and alumni with advance ticket purchase.

***MON OCT 6TH- FREE the Kills show at the Ottobar! brought to us by MyspaceSecretShows

-*note: Fell's Point Haunted PubWalk continues on (Fri & Sat nights) through Nov 28th, (21+).

Daily headphones: Kings of Leon's "Use Somebody". To quote who recommended me the song "if you do anything with your life-download this". And for an indie jazz crawl, India Arie's "The Heart of the Matter" is hot off the S&TC soundtrack, and straight to my daily playlist.

Outside Directions

Like outside my own room-scratching at wood boards looking to put together clarity/sanity...a sweets-filled stomach, and sleeping the day away for the first time in weeks, there's a weight to it.  There's construction sounds, little fliers on the county sidewalks, and raindrop smeared directions. 

There's a ringing phone under the pillow for some reason. 

There's too many stop lights. Monday will arrive. 

...as the banks go bankrupt, the debates go on, and the directions are googled...Where's the trumpet guy on his Towson corner these days? Where's the fabled finish to all the construction? Where's the BELIEVE campaign, the old Baltimore Sun, and the party photos I could have taken?

Then, late Sunday afternoon I was meeting a population of intellects and actors, hidden within Hawkin's Hall; in lawyers suits and holding small black binders. A different breed; living novels, poems, and monologues-within provocative shortly-timed intervals. Cuts. Interps. Duos.  Buttoned up, and fast-forwarding just the same.

Outside, I dug it. 

Outside, distracted from all the melancholy nonsense that piles up on Sundays, from the retrace of a whole month/week (moving into a sunny 78degree Monday). 

And when I came home, there was a fridge full of food!

September, with all its new forms of chaos, is ending very soon. There's a settling-down everyone needs now.

Daily headphones: Katy Perry's "Hot n Cold" for indecisive entries, and traffic jams. While DC band (who played a free show on campus this past Labor Day weekend) Army of Me's song "Perfect" almost sounds like blowing leaves, and putting on work clothes. Plus, it's a free download on their myspace page for a limited time. 

(Video Break)

Forward motion seems to be fast forwarding these days. Today the wind was blustering, and today the flags outside the Admin building ripped in the pre-rain freeze. There's pen'd in plans approaching, and I'm anxious to live them, to revamp from within the little gadgets that spin the clock hands, and tink against other gadgets. 

It requires a rising level of patience. 

So, I'm in the mood to be painfully brief today. I found this weird video on YouTube, made an array of faces while watching it (at work), very intriguing and unsettling! - share opinions?

and, just because...

**This weekend:
- The second to last weekend of the Jim Dine (printmaker and pop artist), exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Which, may I remind everyone has FREE admission, year-round.

- The Annual Book Festival is downtown. 
- Sat 9.27 - Sonar's semester-annual "Rave" Dance Party. Cause there's too little excuses to go dirty dancing anymore..like Havanna nights...in the sketchy warehouse Baltimore style

Daily headphones: Elton John's "Mona Lisa's and Mad Hatters" makes you almost wanna wander the city streets in the early morning. A short remedy for the indecisive music mood that always comes this time of year. 

Boatrides in the Dark

2am on the day after 4th of July, the Bay was swallowed up into pitch darkness. My brother was at the wheel of his Mastercraft skiboat, sending the boatload of grinning friends spiraling and spinning on a satin surface of the familiar waters. We were spiraling & spinning without handlebars. 

Awakened with sweet drinks, and heavy stories. There were lobsters that never had that talk. It was weeks before autumn reunions and declarations, and hours before dawn came; humid & bright. We were toasting, and munching on popcorn.

All those nights of last summer, I'm holding onto certain minutes of, and the next mornings of...And I wonder when the right decisions got made. 

Cause now the relationships change, now the couples have to make important choices, and now I wonder if its even worth going out after 1am.

There's paths we might be meant to take, no clearer than a blind woman's vision...an after-midnight moonless Bay; calm and haunted after scalding fireworks. Calm and haunted by the movements of the engine and friend's hollers. 

Now I'm laughing with a hearty feeling-outside a diner-wearing boots and layers, and the air is breathable and cold again. Busy and busier, and calculating when the right decisions get made. The people making them, the people breaking, the people creating/moving/sleeping/learning/risking/digging it... and the people staying right there with you (wherever that is, wherever Baltimore can be).

Daily headphones: Stevie Wonder's "Superstition" will have you checking the stars and karma, and looking forward to Halloween. It's jazzy and old-school.  

Recher Sept13 (Photos)

Great show-music blasting till 11:30. Friend's band Hotspur (^), came up from DC to rock.

  

Fools&Horses (^) played over an hour!, celebrated CD release with free glowsticks & a video intro.

The Lake Effect ( ) was a good surprise. 

* See more of my photographs fr the concert on the 'space page&albums. www.myspace.com/kebdesign
(thinking next local concert I'll attend isn't till beg of October...(when I get to see some long-lost friends))

***This weekend: 

Sat 9.20 - Fire in the Hole(the newest version of), Jimmie's Chicken Shack, Ever since Ebwood, and Outreach at the Recher. First saw FIH my freshman year of HS (at a Bryn Mawr BOB against All Time Low & others) and they've still got that same signature sound. 

Sat 9.20 - "24 Play Slam" here at TU - free show for students at 8pm. Come out and support those theatre/film majors

Jolt and Crash

A few nights ago I threw all my covers off my bed, while half-asleep. Half-asleep, hand X'd, arm bruised, and completely disoriented in my own blue room. It almost took hours before I processed the complete darkness, and finally dug up the sheets from the floor. 

Like a brick wall had hit me, sober, without any cause. 

I was furious there were no conditions to blame. I felt sick. Cheated or counter-attacking out of nothing but darkness. Run...and-BANG into that wall. 

And ever since I've been 10 minutes late. Leaving, joining, replying, returning...completely late.

Like a maddening cycle of still--jolt--crash, and back again. 

Causing a morning heavy, sloppy, form of stalling. Causing longings of reclusiveness, fighting against the ones of tart concoctions. Since the muscles ache and the inspirations don't come on command.

It's the mad rush of discarding...and confused-trying to right what'll grow dirty on the hardwood floor.

It's the homeless man on the median strip who let me take his portrait-bursting conversation, it's the little old bag lady running across a York Road intersection, it's the cop who saw my telephoto lens and (I'm convinced) stopped to pose in mid-directing of a traffic jam. 

All the people looking for an even rhythm. These are the weeks where weekends tingle with so many places to be. It overwhelms and exhilarates those it doesn't pass over. For a couple smiles, a couple photographs, and a couple minutes it feels like yourself-complete,...before the mood shifts again....and again...

Before another hour goes by in the 410.

Daily headphones: Matt Nathanson's "I Saw", get the live acoustic version, and just unwind.

Drainage

It's like falling humidity somewhere between sewer drains and my conscious knowledge of everything that'll need to be done. With repeated swallowing and choking up of the same words-in the same lines-across a plain of roads driven. 

Feelings of so much more to do, in so much less time, like the projects will crush below the drainage line of social lives. Pressure. Expectation. Sleep that never is enough. 

Sometimes I've got to shut it down and walk steadily away. Steadily on one opinion?

Could the car keys guide themselves, the conversations forget themselves, & the hours change themselves? Then maybe I could pick a point.

But there's something like dowsing rain, running between the crosswalks. 

There's a chill in Baltimore that's approaching-it freezes over from Bayside summertime; the hot vacationlike nights (the ones that whisper still, though now in draining volume). 

There's the lonely smoker on the city corner, outside a window of the couple sharing a firelit table. While all the inbetweens/fakers--alike, their fingertips and noses grow red with the chilly wind.

Waiting crowds, lonely artists, get ushered into heated venues and coffee-roasted places-in boots and scarves. Less lingering. More air to twitch and shiver. And wind. 

And that's Baltimore, as it's more sad and inspiring self. 

I think I'm always excited for it. There's eerie moons, and warm treats, there's hauntings and new clothing. There's change.

((see previous blog for weekend events)))

Daily headphones: DC fellas Crash Boom Bang's song "It's Only Me". It's a bit slower than their other tracks, this one's got an alluring touch of echo and oddity to it. 

International Floor

Friday night, as the tropical storm rolled in outside, I found myself sitting on the floor in a crowded circle around a box of sugared wheat crackers (in "lightbulb" packaging covered in Chinese letters) and a steaming plate of Chapagetti (champagne spagetti). 

Our shoes were spread outside the open-door apartment, and as an American, I was in the minority.

We all kicked back on the carpet, and let our hustling, bustling, jolly hosts run to and from the kitchen, with plates of champagetti and solo cups. While one party-goer kept running from the cat, and everyone shared in hugging goodbye. "Sharing is caring", "Incredibly!"

And I had forgotten....there's an entire population of Baltimoreans out there who, at one point, will grab their passport, hop on a plane, and fly on home. 

They're changing faces of Charm City. They're changing under the native noses. 

What is Baltimore to them? 

And where along the way do we all swap customs and car rides, lemonades and language, and all the comings&goings through BWI and 695?

This weekend (lots to cover): 

• Thurs, 9.11 - TU Art Faculty Exhibit opening reception in CFA gallery 7:30-9pm

• Fri, 9.12 - the weekly Revel Dance Party (21+, hosted by Jeff Hurn & Uber Pat, @ Fletchers) has an unknown fate this week...?

• Sat, 9.13 - Fools & Horses, Hotspur, the Lake Effect(TU guys?) and the Perfect Excuse @ the Recher. You may have heard F&H on Starbuck's "Off the Clock" CD, but Hotspur may just be the odd-man-out group worth coming early for, Dave the keyboard player can even play while hopping up on the stand! ((got my ticket weeks ago)) 
• Sat, 9.13 - Apathy Eulogy (TU guys) Silent Film, Coast to Coast, and Cities (a newly begun band, from the members of Boy Crazy and the more recent Mir&the Moon) @ Fletchers. It's always cool to see a new band at its beginning, & this one is an evolution of members' pasts.
• Sat, 9.13 - Sonar's TAXLO (18+, drink specials for 21+)

• Sun, 9.14 - the Raven's game on TV @ 4:15

Daily headphones:  Mika's "Erase", proves that this fun cartoon-pop-singing Brit ("Relax, take it Easy", "Grace Kelly"), can also spin a slow mournful song. Put it on blast, and maybe reevaluate that long contact list. And for anyone away and missing Baltimore this fall, check out Bleed the Dream's version of "Streets of Baltimore", you might be quoting it in an away message within one listen.

Blog Ambitions***

 I once wrote a paper around the thesis that the 50s/60s generation had parallels to the Millennium. It proved more successful than the following 7pg one spent tearing apart beatnik exile William Burrough's Naked Lunch (don't let the title lure you...it's traumatizing, not in a good way).

This summer, I finally started reading Jack Keroac's On the Road, and for much of it, it was like a sweet tooth addiction. 

I made nostalgic references to the bitter fall of hitch-hiking to confused/amused faces at parties, and formed flimsy plans to visit friends on tours. 

In the end, I wound up racing most Friday afternoons down 702, to stay the weekend on my parents sailboat - that was my Route.

So, I'll to bring out the beatnik in Baltimore, the rolling arts and entertainment, and the small thoughts, (before finally studying abroad). It might be a bumpy ride. It might be a 120-mile an hour hung-over blur, or a sleepy afternoon class morning spent indoors. It might be an intriguing set of the random, or a Monday-morning story. 

Or it might be virtually pointless and chaotic. 

There's always certain oppurtunities to consume the cash, the late hours, the tall pints, and the studious days. There's stories to tell. 

And all the while Baltimore is shuffling it's dirty soles against the city slabs and the suburban reservoirs. 

Want to dig it?

((And with my very first online blog/journal/diary/article, I'll try to organize a certain chaos of "beat", like a certain way of morphing creative writing penmanship into blogging. 

It might just fit.

...and along the way - cut, share, divert, connect, and virtually link to the kids around town studying/working to be artists. (Thinking of throwing in some of my own work too).))

Daily headphones: Tune the blue, try jazz? Melody Gardot's "Goodnight" and "Worrisome Heart" show a sweetheart, pop-like turn to the genre worth sampling

....maybe jazz will be on limewire one day?