The Brilliance!

Hmm…hard to even start this one. It was absolutely amazing. It met and many times exceeded what I imagined (and wanted) from a visit to the Caribbean…small island style. My destination was the Abacos in the ‘Out Islands’ of the Bahamas…there are quite a few cays and small islands that make up the Abacos…all very small, very unpopulated for the most part. And just amazingly beautiful. I could go on and on saying ‘beautiful’ and ‘awesome’ and ‘wow’ like 2,000 times in this post…seriously, I’ll try and keep it under control, ha. I wasn’t there for very long, but I did get to visit the main ‘town’ area, explore 2 stunning beaches – and got to feel that slowed-down island time, just to chill and relax – time had no relevance for a couple days. Too funny – I literally couldn’t get over how the water looked in person – I don’t know how many times I said ‘man, it looks just like the pictures!’ But seriously, all the magazines I read and websites I waste time on…I never really believed the water looked that blue…it does, even better in person. But yeah, amazing weather, beautiful sky at night, nice sunsets…just an amazing trip. I’ve posted up some pictures on our Flickr account…a quick sampling of the trip. Can’t wait to go back…man. And again, many thanks to my extremely gracious hosts! ***Yeah!! That’s a real shark like 2 feet away from me…nuts!

What a weekend here in GR…super nice. Little patio beer and pizza session with the Premier crew, so nice to be outside. Speaking of getting in touch with nature and leaving the stresses of life behind – I got a Blackberry this weekend. The 8800 from Cingular. First off, its just really well built, feels great in your hand, easy to type on, once you’ve got the nav figured out it makes perfect sense, etc. It’s my first Blackberry as I have had all the Treo’s since they were worth having…in fact I’ve owned 9 different Treo’s I believe. 600, 650, and 700p…not exactly dependable phones. But yeah, the Blackberry is certainly built for heavy email/messaging use, and the browser isn’t bad either…2 things I’m pretty much addicted to having with me at all times. And I occasionally use the phone too, ha. Only complaint would be the delay in getting my POP email account I setup. Sometimes its just so slow…I should probably switch to Exchange. Anyone got any advice on that? So yeah, cheers furthering my addiction to email and all that. ***I figured it out! the power of email forwarding and changing my ‘reply to’ on the Blackberry setup page…true push email. Not exactly a break-through. Ha, email nerd-out!

If you keep up with artist/designer portfolios online, you know it’s ALWAYS hit or miss… sometimes you find an artist with beautiful work, but a site that does no justice to their work, as it’s perhaps clumsy to navigate or just doesn’t showcase their work because it focuses too much on the site design or background music or javascript snowflakes falling over top. (Ok, maybe not so much that…) And sometimes you find a site that looks cool, works great, and showcases work well…but the artist’s work is…let’s just say… terrible. Ha. Anyways, these sites are a few of my personal favorites to not only navigate and look at, but the art these people create makes it that much greater. Let’s start with Ms. Maya Hayuk. I’ve been a fan of Maya’s work for a long time now, and her newly updated site is really one of a kind…I love the super personal feel of this site. Really organic, hand-drawn style, and talk about thorough…she has so much work up there….Awesome. Inspiring me to work on my new site… Next up, Graphic Havoc. GH avisualagency’s site has that left/right setup popularized by Daniel Eatock...which in my opinion is a great way to showcase work because it’s so easy…Love the collapsable sections, and of course the Projects Archive is key…showing lots of work. You know you’re doing well as an artist when you can show a lot of work, and it’s all good work. When you first start out, in my opinion, it’s best to show fewer really good pieces than a slew of “eh” pieces. Something only talent and time can help you with…Alright, moving on… Mr. Mario Hugo’s site Loveworn. LOVE this site. I don’t know what it is about it…I like that each time you click a project, a slice of a bigger picture shows up in its place on the list, kind of enticing you to keep clicking through the rest of the work to see the bigger picture. Anyways, Mario’s work is really sick too, so that helps. Last but not least, I’ve got to give some very big respect to the new SVSV site, brought to you by Mr. Gensler and The KDU. What a gorgeous site. I usually hate music on sites, and flash is hard to pull off…and even though this isn’t an “artist portfolio”, it’s still a showcase of something, and they did a wonderful job at that…. then of course you have the incredible work of Von gracing the pages…nice. NICE! NICE!

These things are too cool. While vacationing this past weekend my friend (who is neck-deep into photography) pulls out this huge crazy looking all plastic camera…that weighed like next to nothing. It’s was a Holga without a flash. ‘Holga’...does it get any more German? Actually really well designed or over-designed perhaps – like the super chunky classic German-engineered setup, seriously, love it. What’s really wild about them though is the super trippy pictures they take…which are in medium format. Check the Wikipedia link below for examples or search Flickr – but basically they are totally over saturated with color, while looking kind of blown-out at the same time…the results just remind me of what I think the early 70s would have felt like, ha – maybe not. Either way, I took a whole roll, haven’t gotten them developed yet but I’ll post the results on our Flickr page.

My gosh. Seriously. My new favorite snack. You have to buy some of these…I hear the Rosemary and Olive Oil ones are great too. That’s really what I hear, everyone’s saying it. To top it off I bought some fresh mozzarella…goes perfect. That is all. That’s my whole post.

Ahh…Sunday hang-overs…still lingering at 4:39PM. Not a good look…but what IS a good look is our new interview with Chicago’s own Cool Kids. Call them what you want, hipster-hop, old-school, genre-new, or whatever – they are fresh, and I dig them. And even more so after Virgil and I partied at Underground with their manager, my man Curtis, and Mikey himself – dancing on tables and everything, ha, I love it. They are truly stars in the making…at least I think they are. Anyway – yeah, check the interview…really good stuff. Check their music as well – I swear, its just so refreshing and fun. Not talking about ice and cars, etc…just good old ‘lets have fun and party’ music. Yeah, much needed. Check for an INDISTR.com release from them soon as well (what, you think I wouldn’t try and work that angle? Ha.) Hope everyone had a good weekend – I did. ***Shout to Curtis and Shannon for helping get this interview together!!

I’ve been missing out for a while on Andrew Bird, only recently discovering his beautiful new album Armchair Apocrypha…but better late than never. Probably the most fascinating thing about Bird’s music is the story behind the musician himself and the instruments he plays. Violin, glockenspiel, and guitar combined with a very unique style of whistling and a great voice that “...has been compared to such eminent company as Jeff Buckley, Thom Yorke, and Rufus Wainwright, but has a quality all its own.” (Source). And his lyrics? Intense doesn’t really do his lyrics justice… I love the opening song on the new album, “Fiery Crash”... Describing how basically you don’t get on a plane anymore without thinking of 9/11… just really interesting subject matter and words that he chooses. The Amazon review’s first line says “Strip away the music of an Andrew Bird song, and you’re left with brilliant prose (“across the great chasms and schisms and the sudden aneurysms”), vignettes about mentally fending off plane crashes, infiltrating characters like the kings of Macedonia and Lou Dobbs, and titles such as “Yawny at the Apocalyspe.” I’ve got to check out some of his older albums now too…from what I’ve read they’re equally great. Perfect cover too… What if his last name was Lobster instead? Andrew Lobster.

So I hadn’t personally coded anything in a long time…was starting to feel like all I was doing as of late was consulting, pitching, meetings, etc…I’m not mad about it, its all really good stuff. But I wanted to do something new…scrimg.com. It’s actually a super-simple site…not really ground-breaking, or maybe it is. Basic idea: just like those other photo sharing sites, you can upload a jpg and share it on a form, send to a friend, whatever, etc. Except with scrimg.com you can see where it’s actively being shared, how many times its been viewed, which images are most popular, and you can text it to a phone…yeah. And you don’t have to login to upload stuff. The whole front page is kind of like a ‘Digg’ type model for images on the net, which are most popular – and then a freshly uploaded area too. I mean, really I did this cause Chuck and I are addicted to funny internet pictures, seriously. O rly, I can has, do not want, etc…all the classics. Ha. So check it out and upload something!! ***It’s beta so it might not work perfect…GIFs don’t work I don’t think, embedding on myspace doesn’t work (YET! I got a fix coming!)…and yeah, could be some other weird errors as well. But hey, I programmed the whole thing myself over a couple days. I got a bunch of other stuff I’m doing too…

Spring time…or not? It’s like 30 degrees here today, no joke it was 75+ last week! What happened? Speaking of what happened – can I get even just one decent hip-hop track? Seriously, everything is terrible. Although that new UGK ‘International Players Anthem’ is pretty good. So I’ve been using Treo’s for like 3+ years – time to switch to Blackberry? There is this new candy out called ‘Sweet Tart Ropes’ – a-ma-zing, seriously, really good. What about girls? Dear downtown Grand Rapids arty-indie-cobrasnake-hipster-type-girls, I see you walking in Heritage Hill – where do you go on the weekends?! I’ll be at Bar Divani enjoying their amazing new lobster-baked-potato thing, swing by. I got some new jeans, and true story, they are so fresh I can’t even write them up here cause I don’t want to blow up the spot, do some research. People are still starting new streetwear blogs? What do you think will replace email? Seriously, I was thinking – like, will pop3 be around in the next 5 years? Speaking of technology – funny how images are the new focus, like soooo web 3.0. What will be the next funny internet trend? ‘Sad Crab’ is still pretty hilarious, check it. Will DayJets change the way we travel at all? Will it kill first-class? Man, I seriously love ping-pong – what a fun ‘sport’. Well…I think that will do it, have a splendid day everyone. ***I added a new feature to scrimg, called ‘words’…so instead of ‘tags’ they are…you know, words. Ha…

Been a while since I did a Jay-Z post…Jay did a cool interview on Nightline with Martin Bashir - I’m actually not sure when it was, somewhat recent, and it’s posted up on YouTube. If you read our site often you’ll know I’m (chuck and Virgil too) quite a big fan of Jay…on all the different levels – music, business, inspiration, trend-setting, etc. Interviews like this one and the 60 Minutes are always fun to watch…catch that inside glimpse…or what Jay convinces us is an inside glimpse. Good stuff. Cool to see Martin Bashir ask the ‘tougher’ questions…about the ‘hova’ name and quoting ‘Big Pimping’ lines…I’ve wondered myself what his answers would be. PART 1 (same as link below) & PART 2