I'm going to try to continue posting new work I produce as life goes along.

By and large, I would consider most of them just doodles, but it aught to be fun to look at in your brief stay, here on the Internet.

Ourstage.com offers a unique opportunity for the millions of budding filmmakers out there today with a monthly contest with a prize of up to $5000.

The biggest thing that sets the site apart from other video contest is the judging system. Its taken me a little while to get accustomed to it, but I think I have the concept of it now: All judging is done on a community basis, with videos are pitted against each other in "battles" to determine whose video is better.

I've entered my Media Dub PSA in the "Cutting Edge" category (which features social awareness pieces) for the month of December. Click on the video below or follow this link to go straight to the crazy voting system. Above all, I hope you enjoy as your brain cells receive a tiny bit of stimulation in the background.

On the Asthmatic Kitty Records Sidebar post today, Sufjan Stevens provides his defense for why his seven-act epic piece about the Brooklyn Queens Expressway will feature hula-hoopers. 

After you read, head over to WNYC's Spinning On Air, where you'll find the broadcast featuring some extensive interviewing about Stevens' creative process and two live excerpts from the BQE. The show is an hour long but worth every second.

There is much allusion and contemplation made towards the future of the piece, with such extensions as a CD, DVD, or wide-spread tour resting on the horizon of possibility. This excites me given the improbability of a road-trip to New York to see the show. I can yet hope.

Since this post seems to be all-things-Sufjan, take a look at the interview piece featured in New York Classical and Dance magazine. There was a considerable amount of outrage radiating from the collective network of blog geeks when he proclaimed "Rock and Roll is dead," and Stereogum quoted him on it, out of context.

Sufjan also gave an uncomfortable account of a bit of his past and his family, two things which it seems relatively clear he is trying to avoid, or at least keep separate from his profession. This is why I hope that someday he will write some sort of memoir, or something of the like. Judging by the style he takes in his essays which I've had the pleasure of reading, he could pull off something quite extraordinary.

I wonder who Sufjan Stevens really is. It is very easy to judge people by what they do rather than who they actually are. Too often we unconsciously form our identities around how well we perform every day. If you have a poor performance, an awkward conversation, a wrong note, then for whatever reason you are perceived to have less value. It is very easy to see people and think that we like them because we like what they are doing, while what they do and who they are are two totally different concepts.

Point being that I like Sufjan Stevens' music and writing very much (and both are a large influence on most work of my own) but perhaps more importantly, I find him to be a very interesting individual with very interesting ideas about creativity, friends, and faith. At the same I know very little about the man. Someday, I would very much like to meet him.

I've just pushed a design I have made for Threadless' Ferraby Lionheart competition into the running. It is currently being reviewed and will be available for voting in a few days.

To see where the design started and how it evolved into what I submitted, check out the process work.

Take some time to listen to a little of Mr. Lionheart's music:

www.ferrabylionheart.com

Ferraby Lionheart - Small Planet mp3

I have a Threadless design which I have to finish within four days but is now in critique. Please leave any comments on the design. Feedback is always a positive wether the criticism is negative or positive.

Check it out here.

Its great when you can meet someone who isn't just an internet person who you read about and wish you could meet.

I met Mr. Nate Chung a few nights ago at an Intervarsity outlet where a speaker was discussing the relationship between faith and art. The speaker was extremely exciting, giving new incite into concepts I'd only begun to think about myself.

While it was held in the location where us Columbia Intervarsity students meet, in the college Underground Cafe, there were people from all the nearby downtown art colleges. Nate Chung is currently at School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

While still in Hawaii he organized a rally of positive activism. Check out the story here.

I hope that if he plans another similar event here in Chicago I'll hear about it and be able to participate.

Speaking of Intervarsity, I don't think I've met so many awesome people with whom I share so much in common in my whole life, let alone three weeks.

I recently came across an amazing funk group from the seventies. Not nearly as well known as Sly and the Family Stone, Otis Redding or Curtis Mayfield, but easily one of the most talented funk groups of all time. Especially when their age is taken into account:

High school stage performances often prove to be nothing more than memories, but Kashmere High School in northeast Houston has spawned a sensation that's still drawing listeners, some 40 years later.

Conrad Johnson, the school's band master, formed the Kashmere Stage Band with some of his very best students and took them to compete at high school festivals. The band became a national phenomenon -- not just at band competitions, but in the world of commercial popular music.

The article from which this is quoted is found here on npr.org They tell the story better than I could try. I should note quickly that the band director himself composed all of the music they played.

It all makes me want to keep playing with Apples Montgomery, and trying to lay down some real funk like these guys. Making original music and with a real passion for it. The only experience I had with High School band wasn't anywhere near that ideal. Too often music can stray from its art and creation. Oh well, such is the state of the imperfect world in which we live. Even music can't fix everything.

Check out their compilation CD, Texas Thunder Soul, available on iTunes, Amazon, or from Dusty Groove.

 Sufjan Stevens, symphonic folk artist, experimental musician, and adept lyricist and writer, has taken on a new challenge. Stevens has composed and will be performing an epic thirty minute minute conceptual piece based upon the New York's infamous Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

Because their writers word it much more elegantly than I could ever hope, here's what Asthmatic Kitty Records had to say about the BQE itself and Steven's upcoming performances of the piece:

What is the BQE exactly? It's is an abbreviation for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, a short but formidable interstate roadway that plows through the  neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Queens, cascading upwards and onwards through historic landmarks and industrial playgrounds with the virtuosic twists and turns of a mammoth rollercoaster.  Oh, but it's not quite the high-speed marvel of, say, Germany's Autobahn, nor does it have the international "prestige" of The New Jersey Turnpike, but the BQE inhabits a modest legacy of its own by intersecting, dissecting, and dismembering New York's  most popular borough, offering awe-inspiring city views and voyeuristic vantage points of factories, condos, bridges, cemeteries, used car lots and, of course, people's living rooms. How does one reconcile an ugly cement expressway with the ever-changing phenomenon of Brooklyn? Like all things American, it is both beauty and beast.

Sufjan's performance of the BQE at BAM will include film accompaniment, a visual travelogue of the expressway and surrounding Brooklyn, shot in 16 mm and Super 8. But what is the musical piece, exactly? Not so easy to say. In an era that unravels musical forms, The BQE suffers an identity crisis. It is inspired by the programmatic symphonies of the Impressionists, but it aspires to the pageantry of Copland and the melodrama of a John Williams movie score. It could be a suite, a fugue, a theme and variation, a repetition of melodies, a canon, to name a few. What we can say is that the piece lasts about 30 minutes and will include a small band, a wind and brass ensemble, string players, and, of course, hula-hoopers. There is no singing. But don't worry: the remainder of the show will include Sufjan navigating through old and new songs. The same small voice, the badgered banjo, the glissandos of the piano, the pump organ, the acoustic guitar, and the inaudible thump of the human heart.

There you have it. The one reason I can think of to live near New York city, is the prevalence of Sufjan Stevens performances in New York, his home city, and the surrounding aria. Until I breakdown to such an end, I will only be able to hope that the performance is in some way recorded so that all of us outside of his home area might be able to experience his elegance, pageantry, and creativity. I think I may just inquire about this with Asthmatic Kitty Records themselves.

For more information on the BQE click the following links:

Wikipedia articles on the BQE and its creator, Robert Moses

Asthmatic Kitty Records articles about the project: 1 2

The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) website and ticketing info

Here I am, at two o'clock, eight hours before I have my first college course ever. I sit on my bed, my legs covered, by lap warmed by the humming processor on which I now type. My tobacco-chewing roommate sleeps softly on the cot across the room, occasionally stirring, rustling off the life-like leaves, sifting down into his dreams. The loudest sound in all the room, other than this inner monologue, is the air-conditioner, gently sending its cool breeze into the room around me.

The warm city lights remind me of moths. Not of the fear, the bug phobia, the irrational Emily nor her righteous annoyance. I remember the yellow lit nights, walking, holding a hand, a shapeless form, a reassurance, down drowsy cornered streets.

I remember seeing the streetlights, shop lights, and head lights, with equal and appropriate wonder and intensity. The bright fluttering shapes circling round them all, like dust, perpetually stirred into sunbeam air. That is what a moth is my dear. A dancing flame in the peripheral of my imagination.

I remember best the car rides. The traffic stops. The anxious awaiting as the red turns to green, then yellow, and red again. The fascination of the far-away cop car or ambulance. If we're lucky, its a fire truck!

Tall freeway light poles, bright as day, swinging past like emigrants fleeing the city. I try to time the lids of my eyes to avoid the perpetual on off blinding repetition. I keep them tightly shut, and it becomes a pulse, a dance. A dance on the way into the city.

The city.

It grows bigger. It grows like a slow creeping vine in every direction, like a mountain as big as night, reaching powerfully towards the sky. Like a fire behind the chain mail of the fireplace, like the wood catching aflame.

Is this now my home? Am I now a part of my childhood dream, my fantasy?

The colors of my imagination continue to rush past my eyes, even as I shut my computer, and shut my eyes. I rush back, behind my them, behind my bed, behind my waking, running mind.

I am excited. Making the world a more pleasantly child-like place, one movie at a time, Michel Gondry graces the screen with his classic blend homegrown chaos and quirky characters. The tri-chemistry between Jack Black, the written material, and Mos Def should at the very least be interesting.

Its certainly not going to be as explicitly personal as Science of Sleep or much of the rest of Gondry's created material, but this could be a blessing in disguise. I've got real high hopes. We'll be waiting for January, to see if they're fulfilled.

I loved the Johnny Cash American recordings well before I ever saw the video made for his chilling cover of NIN's Hurt. Seeing the images added by director Mark Romanek, made me fall in love all over again.

Romanek is best known for his feature film One Hour Photo starring Robin Williams (yet another movie I keep neglecting to see). He also has directed videos for a large number of artists, my favorites being Can't Stop by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Devil's Haircut by Beck, Strange Currencies by REM, and El Scorcho by Weezer. He got his start in music videos much like another hero of mine, Michel Gondry, director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the Science of Sleep, and the forthcoming Be Kind Rewind (which I am brimming over with excitement for, and will write about later).

This is quite apt, given the recent release of a Director's Label DVD of Romanek's work. Director's Label was created by the three music video directors Spike Jonze, Chris Cunningham, and Gondry, whose work the first three volumes showcased. Each DVD comes with loads of special features about the directors, the musicians they worked with, and the process that created the work presented.

I supremely recommend checking these out, and if renting or buying isn't an option, then at least viewing their works on youtube or some site of the like. Keep an eye on these names, as they will likely show up in many more feature productions in the future.

So I've submitted a design to Threadless in the standard competition. It probably won't do well, but can't wait to see the community's comments anyway.

Just click on the link box above to see the design and vote for it.

I originally did this as a drawing for my illustration class as a tiny 2''x2'' panel.

After the scoring is done, I'll probably add some clouds or landscape, like in the original, and see where it goes.

On a tangent, Threadless is having a $10 back-to-school sale until Sept. 3rd. This would be a good time to buy that shirt you've been ogling at but never wanted to pay $15+ for. I just ordered this one, which I am rather excited for.

Plus, it will arrive at my new dorm address and so I'll have to figure out how the mail boxes work. Exciting!

I had seen information about this intriguing film maker for some time now but hadn't pursued any of his work with more than a dull desire, adding him to a long list of works and artists I needed to, at one time or another, check out.

But now that I'd moved into the University Center directly adjacent to the Harold Washington library, I decided I might take the immense mid-day free time I have this week or so before classes start to catch up on some film essentials.

I was generally disappointed with what lack of selection I found at the deceptively large fortress of information, entering its double-tall doors with a list of desired options including the late Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries, The Third Man, Terry Gilliam's Brazil, Army of Shadows, and any of Kieslowski's renowned Three Color's film cycle.

While none of these was available (I put a hold on Army of Shadows) I was pleased to find between the multiple copies of various versions of unknown Shakespeare modernizations was hidden two of the three volumes of Kieslowski's Dekalog, or Ten Commandments. Each is an hour long episode of a series of short films each corresponding and relating to one of the biblical old-testament ten commandments.

I had heard good things about his work, but every single one of these stories is perfectly told. Each actor and actress cast with such exactness that is rarely seen in any movie, let alone one of ten complex stories completed in one year, directed by one man.

Each situation delves deeply into the meaning of what it means to be human, and the depths and highs that such a condition lead to. In this sense they feel a lot like Crash, only without the American stigmatisms. Each short film was originally going to be directed by a different individual, but Kieslowski found he could not relinquish control over the ideas he birthed. Instead, they each had a different Director of Photography, resulting in varied, though ever stunning visual styles and cinematography.

The sixth and seventh both have sibling versions which are longer films, with relatively the same story, by Kieslowski, titled A Short Film About Killing and A Short Film About Love accordingly. They share the same casts, so I am interested to see the larger product, especially for "Killing" (pictured at right).

Though I haven't yet watched all of them, I haven't seen a bad episode of the series yet, and therefor recommend them to anyone who would like to enjoy an hour or so of brilliantly paced visual story telling and the thought it provokes after the fact.

Tomorrow, I will check out the Columbia campus library, which according to its web page, has all of the movies I was originally pursuing, in stock and on the shelf.

T-shirts designed by yours truly and friends. Available for sale here.

 www.goodstorm.com/stores/moldytoaster

This thing that we call progress

It isn't really change

The world keeps moving forward

Yet still stays ever same

Kids will keep on being

Exactly what they're named

The words  just shift and alter

But human we remain