50 miler to Ithaca and back

riding

becca and i did 50 miles. photos to come.

mirror

plugged

we had no internet for a week. it was a bit debilitating.

Triangle Forest, Make-Up Break-Up, & DJ Spence

Thursday, 8 PM, Spindle Basement, Dance Party

Counting!

NPR did a nice job of explaining the humorous use of the bleep awhile ago. Here's a prime example.

Go Take a Look

Photos from Santa Fe.

Garlic Scapes

My new neighbor grows garlic. Lots of it. I clearly moved to the right neighbor.

Tonight, I made garlic scape pesto.

Bunch of Garlic Scapes
Pecorino Romano
Olive Oil
Pistachios (!)

I put it on some leftover Mac&Cheese. Anders put it on some freshly made Mac&Cheese&Tuna.

Dottie was more interested in the tuna.

oh, widescreen!

Tugboat Gallery from nocoastfilms on Vimeo.

Where The Goblins Live

This map shows where the goblins live.

june can be drunk on summer fun

I wish I knew how to write AppleScripts. That would make all the upconverting of files for Jake's DVD go faster. Plus it would make me even more of a computer nerd.

Friday night, Nate and Anders and I biked to Heidelberg's and watched some baseball. They couldn't manage to get the Cardinals/Red Sox game on, though, and so we left after a pitcher. Besides, while Heidelberg's was kind of fun 3 summers ago when it was empty, it was not so fun on a crowded Friday evening when the majority of people there were wearing stick-on nametags.

Billy and Liz's wedding was just excellent. Their reading was a selection from The Watchmen. On the walk home, Nate, Ande and I took some time lying in the grass in Antelope Park. There were lightning strikes and stars to be watched.

Everything in this part of Nebraska is still green, and it's almost July.

Next week, sibling road trip to Santa Fe to visit the relatives. You should read the blog of one of the relatives here.

storms

Lincolnites try to make 13-hour song

From the Lincoln Journal-Star:

By MICAH MERTES / Lincoln Journal Star
Monday, Jun 02, 2008 - 12:19:24 am CDT


They’re running a little late, so Mathias Svalina starts to strum a guitar and sing to no one, because they need to get this song started if they’re going to make it 13 hours.

The movie “Top Gun” plays on mute on a nearby TV-VCR combo.

“It’s better we do this on time rather than correctly,” Svalina says. “Although, I’m not sure what correctly would be.”

Anders Peterson (left), 27; Ande Reinkordt, 28; and Elisabeth Reinkordt, 25, play a ventilation duct, an electric guitar and a keyboard during a 13-hour improvisational song on Sunday at Box Awesome, 815 O St. (Micah Mertes)

There’s no textbook example of performing a single, uninterrupted, improvisational 13-hour-long song with no structure, no rules, no purpose. All that matters is the duration. It will take a fluctuating set of musicians — and some who aren’t musicians — to make it through the half-day-long set.

If you’re looking for a rational, you’re out of luck. It’s not supposed to make sense. It’s just supposed to last 13 hours.

Starting at noon on Sunday, a group of Lincolnites came together to tackle the senseless endeavor in the basement of Box Awesome, 815 O St. Their plan was to make it to 1 a.m. Monday, employing every conceivable sound-making instrument or device.

Guitars, computer keyboards, mandolins, voices, typewriters, balloons, mic distortion, ventilation duct, a Pat Robertson tape played in slow motion. The results are dissonant, bizarre, but not without moments of unexpected beauty.

“Well, it comes to being that everything is an instrument,” says Ande Reinkordt, the founder of local band Man’s Last Great Invention and a participant in one-song Sunday. “Everything makes some sort of sound.

There’s a visual component as well.

A drawing of Kiefer Sutherland’s vampire of “The Lost Boys” takes the stage at one point. Architect and Lincolnite Marti Gottsch sings through a big lion mask. Movies of the ’80s — “Top Gun,” “War Games,” “Willow,” “Ghost” — play on the TV.

And Elisabeth Reinkordt, Ande’s wife, has set up an old projector, which is playing 18-mm film reels of black and white documentaries about monkeys and child psychology. Elisabeth found the reels while Dumpster diving outside a local high school.

The 13-hour-long song offers a strange accompaniment to both the ’80s movies and the educational documentaries, which play simultaneously.

The volleyball scene in “Top Gun” carries new weight during the sonic distortion. And the electric-guitar-keyboard-ventilation-duct ensemble provides a rousing backdrop to the final dogfight.

“We saved Maverick,” Ande says, after the scene ends.

People come and go, doing what they can to contribute to the experimental opus.

But at the two-hour mark, the performers start to realize that, wow, they’ve still got 11 hours left. No one says so, but there’s palpable doubt on a few faces.

Can they make it?

Only those still there at the end know for sure.

Reach Micah Mertes at 473-7395 or mmertes@journalstar.com.

One Song Sunday

From Ande:

OK. It's time to start digging out your old banjos, guitars, bowls, kick drums, bongos, clapping hands, nintendos, kazoos, screams, televisions, cats, washtub basses, art, dolphins, crazy eyes, tds, feet, and anything that you might like to make sound and music with. One Song Sunday is upon us. June 1st at Box Awesome ... Starting at Noon the sound will begin and will not end until 1am...ultimate patience in collaboration. Please Join Us!

storms! storms!

warnings and touchdowns and hails and winds and tornadoes and counties being listed off and my cat's watching a mosquito killer making circles on the ceiling

Glad I mostly ride a bike

Ok, I'm Conflicted

I love that my pick for president includes smart growth and things like bicycles into his transportation platform. (Especially after the current Secretary of Transportation claimed that bikes and pedestrians "weren't actually forms of transportation.")

But making spoke cards? C'mon.

listening

The new Erykah Badu album is incredible.

memorially riding day bikes

This morning, Felice, Mathias, and I headed out on city trails for a good long ride. Near my house, we saw lots of downed trees from last night's storm.



The 60+ mph wind gusts made the trees look like this, even with a fast shutter speed. My neighbor, however, was so committed to finishing her yard work that she was out with her LEAF BLOWER.

Once we got into the suburbs, the erosive properties of new development and empty lots filled the underpasses with an inch of mud.

Levels of bike gear appropriateness for conditions:

Mathias -- Kona dr. dew with disc brakes, off-road tires
Felice -- Surly cross check with fenders, cross tires
Me -- Bertoni roadie, slick tires

I managed to stay on the bike through it all, but at the end of the trail, as we walked up the 30 or so feet to the street, both Felice and I got so much mud caked to our brake calipers/fenders that our wheels no longer rotated. As we pulled off handfuls of mud, Mathias threw more at us. About a mile later, on another mud slick, we considered going mud sliding on the sidewalk along 84th street. We chose to throw mud at each other instead.

Once we got home, I was too Germanically driven to clean off my bike to take photos of the muddiness. Apologies. Here's video of the tree in my front yard, instead.


Wind Storm from nocoastfilms on Vimeo.

Room for One Color

Taken at the Olafur Eliasson exhibit at SFMoMA in January.

People look nice under one color of light.

Bike to Work Day 2008

Since pretty much every day is bike to work day for me, going on over a year now, yesterday was nothing too exceptional. I did, however, have to strap some additional gear on my bag in preparation for camping.

nice

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Lunch

Egg Salad Sandwiches (to make 3)

Olive Bread from Le Quartier

3 Eggs, hard-boiled
about a 1/4 lb. of Pea Shoots
Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper
Dash of Vinegar

Eat.

Bike to Work Week

Next week (May 12-18) is Bike to Work Week. Too bad we don't have this kind of parking...

National Bike Month

BikeSnobNYC says it all in his favorites.

This Made Me Laugh Out Loud

On my commute home today, I nearly ran over a squirrel's tail. ON A BIKE! I started giggling and said "Whoa!"

William Elliott Whitmore

Going to see an old friend tonight...



Listen on MySpace

Ernie Chambers in the NYT

weekend

There is No Excuse Called Staying Home

I just came back from seeing Tatsuya Nakatani perform with Luke Polipnick and Chris Bates at the Box. Holy wow.


Tatsuya Nakatani w/Luke Polipnick and Chris Bates @ Box Awesome 4-10-08 from nocoastfilms on Vimeo.

Friday night.

Either you are going to see

Tatsuya Nakatani

at Jones Coffee (11th & H) from 8-10;

or you are going to see a fine young singer, in her final recital before moving on to graduate programs elsewhere,

Anna DeGraff

at Westbrook Recital Hall (12th & R) at 8:45.

Nice Things

Dinner

Jim Stevens

"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body... but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming... Wow, what a ride!!!"

Change

Make your own.

Hmmm...

Last fall, Nate came home from Chicago for a weekend. We hung out at my parents' kitchen table late into the night, drinking whiskey. This happened along the way...

Mikesch der Osterhase

UNL Surplus Auction

More

Things I Saw On A 2-Hour Bike Ride

1. A bunch of junior high students, in the middle of the street, part the sea of their bodies, one shouting "a biker, damn she's fast!" (To be fair, I was going downhill...)

2. A mourning dove that flew about a foot in front of my face.

3. Two junior high boys, one saying "I love you," me answering "Thank you," as they got out of my way.

4. Kevin Wilkins, though since we were going in opposite directions on the bike path, by the time I realized it was him, it was too late to turn around and catch that Olympic-speed cyclist. We exchanged the obligatory nod of the helmet, though.

5. Canada Geese hanging out on the ice still left on Holmes Lake.

6. A bunch of small dogs tied to the undercarriage of an RV parked outside of Pershing Auditorium.

Böögg

In Zürich, Switzerland, a large, stuffed (with fireworks, among other things) snowman is burned in effigy to end the winter. My father burned his 20+-year-old coveralls, stuffed with hay, baggies of gasoline, sparklers, and matches. Man's Last Great Invention was on hand for a live soundtrack.


Böögg from nocoastfilms on Vimeo.

proud (if a bit frozen) face

I biked to work today on a sheet of ice covered in a bit of snow and topped off with a crusty, icy topping that had been formed by the 16mph north wind, making the 1 degree temperature feel like -18 degrees. I bike straight north, and boy I felt awesome after that.

Sign/Signifier/Signified

This is way better than Garfield ever was

Jon Arbuckle the bi-polar schizophrenic.



It's Garfield, without the cat-straight-man.

You Should Probably Be Reading....

Octopus Magazine #10 instead of my blog. Well, at least for now.

This is just a partial screenshot of the 8 x 10 grid of poets representin':

From Vimeo's favorites

What a sweet little animation!


Leo's Song from impactist on Vimeo.

Do You?

I made this in November of 2006 for the Multiplex installation put together by the Thought Farmers. A row of televisions was set up on a downtown Lincoln sidewalk on a cold December First Friday. There was even a popcorn machine!

The piece is certainly inspired by Austrian experimental filmmaker Martin Arnold, who is most well-known for using an optical printer to dissect a film scene frame by frame, examining minor movements and sounds. In light of the material used, this piece is also certainly an exercise in dealing with our current political situation (sadly, even more than a year later).


Do You? from nocoastfilms on Vimeo.

rawwwr

Everything is A Smile

BARACK OBAMA WANTED YOU TO HAVE SOME CUPCAKES.

Fire

A still shot from a piece for Man's Last Great Invention

...

Felice sent me this today.

Encyclopedia Baracktannica

Oh, the Internets

What ever did we do without them?

Caucusing

Super Saturday

Ok silly. I know Super Tuesday isn't over yet, but you better get your booty to a Nebraska caucus site this Saturday to vote.

Lancaster County is registering voters at 5:15 PM (any resident can register/switch party at the site) and caucusing at 6:00 PM. Find your location.

Douglas County is registering voters at 9:15 AM and caucusing at 10:00 AM. Find your site here.



GOBAMA!!!!!!!!!

Faces

Warhol meets sociology in Britain.

GOOD Magazine on Obama

Frozen

Processed Food is Nasty

My friend Kat is up to something excellent...

Wowowowowowowow 3D!

Dude at Carnegie Mellon has totally figured it out. Wiimote 3D head tracking. Srsly whoa.

This one's for the calendar...

Every year, I get the Cat Lovers Against the Bomb calendar. It's a side arm of Nebraskans for Peace, and it's got 8"x10" photos of cats, cat-head-shaped moon phase icons, and important dates in both cat and peace history.

This story will almost definitely be in next year's calendar.

Not the cat in question, just from Flickr






Missing Cat Found in Owner's Suitcase

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: January 22, 2008

Filed at 11:38 p.m. ET

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. (AP) -- The last time cat-owner Kelly Levy saw her tiger-striped feline was before she took her husband to the airport. The 24-year-old came back to her house late Friday to find the bottom step, where Gracie Mae would usually be waiting, empty.

Levy tore the house apart looking for the 10-month-old tabby who had been spayed just days before. She and her dad took out bathroom tiles and part of a cabinet to check a crawl space and papered the neighborhood with ''lost cat'' signs.

Then she got a phone call.

''Hi, you're not going to believe this, but I am calling from Fort Worth, Texas, and I accidentally picked up your husband's luggage. And when I opened the luggage, a cat jumped out,'' Levy recalled the caller saying.

Gracie Mae had crawled into Seth Levy's black suitcase undetected, been put through an X-ray machine, loaded onto an airplane, thrown onto a baggage claim conveyor belt and picked up by a stranger.

The tabby made the 1,300-mile trip home on an $80 plane ticket Sunday night.

------

Information from: South Florida Sun-Sentinel, http://www.sun-sentinel.com

Star Wars Guide to the Candidates

XO to the people-powered media. Star Wars Guide to the Candidates

Perfect Time

It's snowing. Perfect time to curl up with the LOLCat Bible Translation Project!

Ceiling Cat

An excerpt from Genesis:

1 Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez An da Urfs, but he did not eated dem.

2 Da Urfs no had shapez An haded dark face, An Ceiling Cat rode invisible bike over teh waterz.

3 At start, no has lyte. An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz.4 An Ceiling Cat sawed teh lite, to seez stuffs, An splitted teh lite from dark but taht wuz ok cuz kittehs can see in teh dark An not tripz over nethin.5 An Ceiling Cat sayed light Day An dark no Day. It were FURST!!!1

6 An Ceiling Cat sayed, im in ur waterz makin a ceiling. But he no yet make a ur. An he maded a hole in teh Ceiling.7 An Ceiling Cat doed teh skiez with waterz down An waterz up. It happen.8 An Ceiling Cat sayed, i can has teh firmmint wich iz funny bibel naim 4 ceiling, so wuz teh twoth day.

9 An Ceiling Cat gotted all teh waterz in ur base, An Ceiling Cat hadz dry placez cuz kittehs DO NOT WANT get wet.10 An Ceiling Cat called no waterz urth and waters oshun. Iz good.

11 An Ceiling Cat sayed, DO WANT grass! so tehr wuz seedz An stufs, An fruitzors An vegbatels. An a Corm. It happen.12 An Ceiling Cat sawed that weedz ish good, so, letz there be weedz.13 An so teh threeth day jazzhands.

14 An Ceiling Cat sayed, i can has lightz in the skiez for splittin day An no day.15 It happen, lights everwear, like christmass, srsly.16 An Ceiling Cat doeth two grate lightz, teh most big for day, teh other for no day.17 An Ceiling Cat screw tehm on skiez, with big nails An stuff, to lite teh Urfs.18 An tehy rulez day An night. Ceiling Cat sawed. Iz good.19 An so teh furth day w00t.

20 An Ceiling Cat sayed, waterz bring me phishes, An burds, so kittehs can eat dem. But Ceiling Cat no eated dem.21 An Ceiling Cat maed big fishies An see monstrs, which wuz like big cows, except they no mood, An other stuffs dat mooves, An Ceiling Cat sawed iz good.22 An Ceiling Cat sed O hai, make bebehs kthx. An dont worry i wont watch u secksy, i not that kynd uf kitteh.23 An so teh...fith day. Ceiling Cat taek a wile 2 cawnt.

24 An Ceiling Cat sayed, i can has MOAR living stuff, mooes, An creepie tings, An otehr aminals. It happen so tehre.25 An Ceiling Cat doed moar living stuff, mooes, An creepies, An otehr animuls, An did not eated tehm.

26 An Ceiling Cat sayed, letz us do peeps like uz, becuz we ish teh qte, An let min p0wnz0r becuz tehy has can openers.

27 So Ceiling Cat createded teh peeps taht waz like him, can has can openers he maed tehm, min An womin wuz maeded, but he did not eated tehm.

28 An Ceiling Cat sed them O hai maek bebehs kthx, An p0wn teh waterz, no waterz An teh firmmint, An evry stufs.

29 An Ceiling Cat sayed, Beholdt, the Urfs, I has it, An I has not eated it.30 For evry createded stufs tehre are the fuudz, to the burdies, teh creepiez, An teh mooes, so tehre. It happen. Iz good.

31 An Ceiling Cat sayed, Beholdt, teh good enouf for releaze as version 0.8a. kthxbai.

Ahhh

Ande, in response to seeing the video about the new MacBook Air:

"Oh my god, I want 5 of everything they make. Seriously, if they made toilet paper, I'd buy it, because I know it would be the absolute best. My ass would never be cleaner."

More Photos, Secondary Blog

Darin kindly uploaded an album of photos. My camera, defunct, has yet to be replaced.

Also, knitting and other handmade pursuits (other than films) have their digital home on a new collaborative blog, Handmade It, viewable here. Let me know if you want in.

Bicycles in China

Great little video done by Bryce Kanights found via Good Problem.

SFMOMA

new bike city

Yesterday I biked in San Francisco. Hills conquered, bikes taken on trains, bike hooks hanging in the courtyards of bars, messenger bags aplenty. Very nice.

MIA

I've been skiing in Colorado for the past five days.

I have learned while here in Colorado that spin-offs spin off spin-offs.

Public Enemy > Flavor Flav > Flavor of Love > I Love New York

...or is it?