Ploafmaster General

Smithsonian Magazine has a fascinating (if not slightly morbid) article about a 1924 kidnap and murder of a 14-year-old boy in Chicago by two young, wealthy, and deranged men. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb botched a scheme to kidnap and murder one of Loeb's cousins while extorting ransom money from the boy's father, and their trial gripped the city - indeed, the country - while a prominent prosecutor of the day battled with attorney Clarance Darrow between the death penalty and life imprisonment.

The article gave the impression that Darrow fought more for preventing another execution than for the defense of his clients, and his quote after the trial seems to feign disappointment at the "loss" of his case:

Well, it's just what we asked for but...it's pretty tough....It was more of a punishment than death would have been.

While the piece has been unfortunately paginated its window into early 20th century culture is worth the read.

Who needs burritos when you have magic pants?

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb2a2pNBR0c&hl=en&fs=1&w=580&h=470]
(via waxy)

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/1388827 w=580&h=327]
we used to call people late at night from eran hilleli on Vimeo.

Eran Hilleli is a student at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, and each one of his shorts on Vimeo is a joy to watch, whether it's stop-motion, traditional animation, or a blend of motion graphics generated by a computer.

"we used to call people late at night" - the video above - is my favorite so far. It's creepy to me, perhaps because it feels both real and frighteningly fantastical at the same time.

Looks like Ted "Bridge-to-Nowhere" or "The-Internet-is-a-series-of-tubes" Stevens won't be in the Senate much longer.

The NY Times reports that investigations have led to an indictment and corruption charges for the senior senator from Alaska. Even if he survives the legal proceedings, I have a feeling there will be calls to step down to prevent further tarnishing of an already abysmal scene for Congressional Republicans over the past couple of years.

This certainly shouldn't help the impression of Congress on the whole for Americans who apparently approve of the legislature by less than 10%.

In tonight's penultimate class we replayed, for the most part, the last several weeks. There were two major differences, however.

First, I had the negatives from my medium format test roll, and as such, I could make prints of my new square delights. I had to swap out the 50 mm condenser lens for an 80 mm and use a larger negative carrier, but the process was otherwise the same. The results were decidedly different; never have I seen such clear and richly-detailed prints from 400-speed film! There was almost no discernible loss of information on a 7.5 by 7.5 print.

Second, because the teacher was heading up to the roof of the building to take a pinhole camera shot, he asked us if we wanted to join him. He didn't really have anything to tell us or show us (he just sort of took his pinhole picture while we played around), but I had my Yashica with me, and an unused roll of Provia color slide film. I shot almost the entire roll on the roof, and polished off the last four in the class room at the end of the evening. My meter was at home so I'm not really sure how they'll turn out, but I'm still looking forward to the results.

That's that - no assignments, nothing different to expect for the last class next week, and no instruction. I guess we'll have more time for printing while we wrap things up...

We'll see! One week left.

If you, like me, live in a part of the City of Richmond (or anywhere, really) that has yet to see fiber optic internet connectivity in your neighborhood, there's a simple way to check if it's coming soon:

Verizon's Virginia Community Page contains a link to a PDF-format schedule of their construction plans for FiOS. I've not linked to the schedule directly because it's typically bi-monthly. It looks like they're finally getting close to my humble Seminary Avenue, but I can't help feeling like they'll have something newer and better by the time they finally get to my block.

There are pages for states other than Virginia as well. It's a shame you can't get to these pages more directly or common-sense-like. When you check for FiOS availability in your area and there is none, all they do is try to hawk their DSL service instead.

When I hear Simple Minds' iconic 80's anthem, "Don't You (Forget About Me)," I'm filled with a semi-false nostalgia that tricks me into reminiscing about my mostly crappy high school years...

It was December of my senior year at Central Senior High School in the depressed rural county of Lunenburg, Virginia, and I was preparing for a concert on Saturday, the 19th. I was in this concert, playing bass guitar for a band with Mugs and Lucas called Uprooted, and we were getting ready for a six-band show in the improvised back room club at the Mean Bean coffee shop in Clarksville. We'd drawn the third slot out of a hat and had a 45-minute set to rehearse consisting of songs written almost entirely by Mugs.

Some of the tunes were decent, some of them were crappy (in retrospect), but nearly all of them reflected some romantic angst between Mugs and an unnamed gal from our school, and for whatever reason, the songs enjoyed a growing popularity in our area. By the week before the gig, word had spread around our school of the upcoming show and we were expecting a fair portion of concert attendees in support of our fledgling act.

The night of the show came, and while the two bands before us had disappointingly short sets we were more than ready to take the stage. As we stood on the riser, instruments in hands and stage lights coaxing the sweat to surface before we even started playing, we looked out over a steadily building crowd in this ersatz concert hall and kicked into what would be our last concert together. We played a varied set, sure to include some of our shorter instrumental pieces that grabbed the attention of the small town youth when Uprooted debuted at Autumn Days back in October. The room continued to fill until a girl, the object of Mugs' lyrics, walked through the door. We scrapped our next song and substituted a straight blues rocker, "I Can't Get You Off Of My Mind." My brother wailed the lyrics in a scratchy baritone, all but singing to the unnamed show-goer in the front.

I remember stepping out of the lights with a high I've yet to experience again. I've never sought to draw attention to myself (honest!), but for the better part of an hour we were rock stars in our region. After unplugging our instruments we joined the crowd for the rest of Bean Fest '98 (seriously), receiving many a high-five and compliment as we mingled with the patrons. I remember enjoying the rest of the night, but I don't remember the rest of the bands...

We packed up our gear from the back of the building in the van of our drummer's father, and after the lights went up and concert-goers started to leave, we made our way to the curb in front of the coffee shop to meet up with our ride. Paulie, our step-dad, had pulled up in our '93 Dodge Intrepid with Farmville's WXJK playing over the speakers.

When he stepped out of the car I could hear Simple Minds start to play over the radio, so I rolled down all the windows and cranked up the volume so we could bask in our short-lived teenage glory.

Will you recognise me?
Call my name or walk on by
Rain keeps falling, rain keeps falling
Down, down, down, down

Okay, so here's some honesty: Memories are notoriously unreliable and murky, so I'm sure some of the events described herein aren't completely accurate. I may have even exaggerated some of it for effect. What I know to be accurate for sure, though, is what I felt. What I still feel. Uprooted didn't last much longer. The drummer and his father - our sort-of manager - wanted to avoid any more free gigs and start playing more clubs further around the state. Mugs wanted to focus on the music and was afraid of being too caught up with the money. We dissolved before Christmas.

We may have only lasted three months, but that band gave me some of the only good time I ever had in high school, capped-off and summed-up in the strains of "Don't You (Forget About Me)."

I've uploaded my entire test roll of medium format film to my Flickr page. Being a test roll, the shots are, consequently, not that interesting. But I think the detail and clarity of the film format is evident.

It's Friday, so my brain isn't really at work. But some portion of my brain is almost always on the internet, so here's a glorious entry from Sarah Walker over at McSweeney's to distract you, too.

Nine new exposures on my Flickr action...all from a day trip to Farmville with Jake.

Neil Young is whining about a perceived lack of audio quality from MP3 files and players.

This is humorous to me on a number of levels:
1. I'm no fan of Neil Young's music, but I've heard a fair amount of it in my life because my dad was a fan. Young's work isn't exactly the sort of "music" that would benefit from a higher-grade sound system, and his vocals and guitar work make me question whether he can really hear the difference anyway.
2. Sure MP3 files may not be ideal, but at higher quality levels (like the 256k files from AmazonMP3 or iTunes Plus) any loss from a CD is hardly noticeable to the average ear, especially on the sound systems that the average listener can afford.
3. Young shouldn't blame the playback technology too much either - the phrase "garbage in, garbage out" from computing works in the recording industry, too. An overwhelming amount of recordings are created to maximize volume and even out the levels for the sake of radio singles.

But go ahead, Neil. Blame the technology. I'll keep blaming your tin ear.

So here's the big reveal: a new (old) camera (pardon the blurry low-light macro shot)!



This is a Twin Lens Reflex camera with the top lens for the viewfinder and the bottom for the picture. It shoots medium format (120) film creating 6x6 cm negatives. The results, assuming this thing works, would be like going from watching TV on basic cable to watching it in high definition. So here I go with the true square format, and I should have my results back by the end of the week - but they're only being processed, not scanned. If they actually turned out alright, then I plan to have the negative strip scanned to CD so I can post some frames on the web. Here's hoping, because this has the potential to really kick up the clarity and detail of my pictures...

I'll spare everybody the gory details on the camera such as the specs and such, but if anyone's curious, I'd be happy to entertain any questions about the TLR in the comments.

Taking conspicuous consumption to new...ahem..depths, U.S. Submarines manufactures submersible watercraft for the ridiculously wealthy. Check out the Phoenix 1000:



For a cool 78 million clams, you could have your very own. Torpedoes not included (I think...).

Michael Grunwald's Time article about McCain spends most of its time discussing the long odds against the Arizona senator in the 2008 presidential election. His last paragraph really resonated with me, however:

That doesn't mean that anything's probable. The media will try to preserve the illusion of a toss-up; you'll keep seeing "Obama Leads, But Voters Have Concerns" headlines. But when Democrats are winning blood-red congressional districts in Mississippi and Louisiana, when the Republican president is down to 28 percent, when the economy is tanking and world affairs keep breaking Obama's way, it shouldn't be heresy to recognize that McCain needs an improbable series of breaks. Analysts get paid to analyze, and cable news has airtime to fill, so pundits have an incentive to make politics seem complicated. In the end, though, it's usually pretty simple. Everyone seems to agree that 2008 is a change election. Which of these guys looks like change?

This explains almost exactly (though not entirely) how I feel about the media's approach to this election cycle. Could it really be a close race? Maybe. But if it wasn't you'd hardly know. Remember when it was practically fact that Obama had knocked Clinton out of the primary race, but the media still clung to every last vote as if there was some chance Hillary would find a way?

I think Grunwald's right - unless there's some dramatic mistake or world event or who knows what else, this election looks pretty locked up for the junior senator from Illinois. But a done-deal doesn't make for good ratings or page views or sales of those dreadfully partisan books (from both sides) you see in the center tables at Barnes and Noble during election season.
(via Gruber)

Peep it - a totally sweet animated video for a blippy electronic club piece:

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/1154958 w=580&h=326]
Ghislain Poirier - Hit & Red (official) from departement on Vimeo.

"Hit and Red" comes from Montreal musician Ghislain Poirier who seems to specialize in bumpin' beets.

From the get-go, by the title alone, this is a very introspective and selfish piece of writing. For that, despite the personal nature of this website, I apologize.

I've been trying to sort out my thoughts on creative processes for some time now, and I've particularly attempted to reconcile my perceived creative impotence with the strong creative urges I feel. Well I can tell you now that I still haven't sorted out said thoughts, but I figured starting some writing on the topic would be as good a springboard as any to get some of these ideas out of my head. At least after this I can look back on what I wrote and start to filter through that which sounds inane, unclear, or nonsensical and refine my understanding. Here I go, diving right in.

From my earliest memories (hinted at in some earlier posts, no doubt) there's been this great struggle in my mind between the left and right brain, the creative and the academic. By the age of four I was building Lego objects, and identifying dinosaurs by their right names at the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. As I continued through childhood I could just as likely be found drawing aircraft and cartoons as watching Mr. Wizard. It wasn't until I was in the middle of high school that I felt I might need to choose between the two sides of my personality (an errant notion, to be sure, but what I thought none-the-less). I figured I could keep my creative inclinations as hobbies while I pursued more "practical" roads in the sciences, so by my junior year I decided engineering was where I was headed.

From the start, though, I stuck with right-brained activities in college. I may have abandoned drawing at this point, but I still played guitar and had recently discovered an affinity for singing. Though I changed majors to information systems halfway through school, I kept playing music, and my introduction to Valerie (before she was Mrs. Warshaw) also opened my eyes to the beauty of architecture, design, handcraft, modern art, and so much of the visual spectrum I'd missed out on. By the time I'd graduated and entered the work force, a great deal of my attention was absorbed by the products of artistic expression, be it theater, painting, music, or furniture design.

But something still felt like it was missing...

You see, participating in artistic pursuits doesn't equal creativity. The ability to play the guitar is not the same as the ability to write music forthe guitar. Appreciation for photography is not the same as having an eye for visual composition. Now a new layer of complexity had come into focus for my artistic frustration. I not only wanted to be immersed in the world of creativity; I wanted to create.

The problem is, as I see it, my lack of real creative ability - at least so far. My attempts to realize songs or lyrics failed miserably in the form of cheesy rhyme schemes and trite chord progressions. My feeble adventures trying to return to pencil drawing did little more than to remind me of the chasm that separated my skill from real talent. Now I play at photography, but I have yet to see how that plays out. We'll see. I still haven't taken any pictures that mean anything. Most of my work to date may as well be snap shots taken with a quality lens.

All of this makes me wonder what it is that develops into expressive ability within artists of various types. Is it poverty? Hardship? Mental instability? I've had a pretty easy life, so perhaps...No, certainly it's no list of causes so simple, but it's tempting for me to associate artistic greatness with suffering or heartache.

The funny thing to me is how this post itself serves as evidence to my point. You see, I'd intended to somehow connect my creative tendency with my history and my experience of certain art forms, but instead I've spent half the writing on my formative years and self-consciously abbreviated the real crux of what I wanted to say. At least I can say that prose was never one of those creative pursuits which I, well, pursued.

Anyway, I've written over 700 words already - far longer than my average post - so I'm sure many of my readers have lost interest by now. At any rate, I'll never give up my search for real artistic experience, and if I'm lucky, some of it may be my own.

After tonight, I'm officially bummed out about this class. Don't get me wrong, the darkroom time has been great, and still is. And tonight I actually received some useful photographic advice from the teacher, but it was after I initiated a discussion. It wasn't general instruction for the class.

There were only four of us students tonight, and I was one of only two who'd bothered to have fresh negatives. So while I spent much of the session making some prints (after a contact sheet, of course), the other students mostly played around with photograms and rudimentary solarization. The teacher sat outside the darkroom reading a book.

No assignment (no surprise), but we're apparently to look out for an email from the instructor tomorrow. Two Mondays left, and I can put this half-waste of a class behind me and start looking forward to the spring when I hope to take an intermediate class somewhere.

I have something potentially very cool on the way to me, and I think it could be here by the end of this week.

And for the two of you who know what I'm talking about, keep yer collective trap shut :-)

Oi...as if the MPAA wasn't stupid enough.

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/877053 w=580&h=326]
A SHORT LOVE STORY IN STOP MOTION from Carlos Lascano on Vimeo.

This glorious animated short not only features one of my favorite Sigur Rós songs (Takk...'s "Hoppípolla"), but highlights a sweet blend of traditional stop-motion handicraft and digital artistry. Carlos Lascano describes the process (and is gracious enough to include photos) on his website.

Jason Santa Maria's latest post is about the passing of physical media generally, and the impending discontinuation of instant film by Polaroid specifically. His writing makes me feel at once nostalgic, defiant, and sad at the same time as I consider what, beyond the physically-generated records of the visual, will be lost to the march of technology. Along with the coming loss of analog photographic imagery we'll inevitably see a fading away of the equally artistic processes required to develop negatives and create prints.

I'm no Luddite (and in fact, I'm a gadget freak), but part of me will be sad to see the eventual disappearance of the tangible implements of photography, an art form (in its practical incarnation) younger than these United States.

Holy sweet MERCY, stop what you're doing and go watch the trailer for Watchmen RIGHT NOW.

When I have an iPhone (a little later this year), I already know one program I'm going to buy for it...CHECK IT:

http://blip.tv/play/ih_CzAGJ5FQ

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed comes out for the iPhone in September, apparently, and it looks hawt.
(via TUAW)

I'm pretty sure this is in response to the over-blown media noise-making about the recent cover illustration, but even if it's not, yesterday's totally safe animation from The New Yorker is hilarious.

I just caught the teaser for Terminator: Salvation on Yahoo!'s movie page, and I have to say, I'm actually intrigued. Christian Bale plays John Connor, and after serious awesomeness in Batman Begins, The Prestige, and most likely The Dark Knight, I take this as a good sign.

Of course McG, the director, has some pretty nasty stains on his resume, so we'll have to see how it shapes up over the next year as more details are revealed...