Thursday, May 8, 2008
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Real Talk of Love
The setup: Kirsten loved herself some hair metal back in the day and secretly – well, more like not-so-secretly – still does. There was a moment this weekend when she grabbed her jean jacket and gasped, thinking for an instant that her precious Motley Crue pin had fallen off it. "Crue!" was all she could say. Luckily the pin was still attached. That's when I pulled her close...
Me: Man, you love butt rock. You love it. Would you love me more if I could sing like Brett Michaels?
Kirsten: That's not possible.
[A few seconds of gazing into each other's eyes.]
Kirsten: You could never sing like Brett Michaels.
Me: Man, you love butt rock. You love it. Would you love me more if I could sing like Brett Michaels?
Kirsten: That's not possible.
[A few seconds of gazing into each other's eyes.]
Kirsten: You could never sing like Brett Michaels.
Friday, May 2, 2008
Friends in Thai Places: Matthew Nistor, Photographer
Kirsten is full of the ideas. Most of the time I'm just playing catchup. For instance, last week she wrote a blog about her dear friend Jay Lantrip, who handcrafts her own kick-ass, gorgeous and stylish clothing line, Jennifer Joy Creative, right out of her Lansing home. Kirst didn't do this because Jay needs the advertising - as it is, Jay's got custom orders coming out of her ears - she just did it out of pure admiration.
Naturally, I was jealous. Because I've got a lot of talented friends too, friends who I should be propping out on these web pages if I wasn't so busy wasting time. And so this week I'm going to make a concerted effort to write about some of them. In fact, I'm even going to create a special Wingstroke segment for this occasion, called Friends in Thai Places.
Why "Thai Places," you ask. Because I'm forever in search of the perfect name for a Thai restaurant, and when I've found that name I'm going to open my own joint and become a man of wealth and leisure. So far my top picks are Thai-lenol, Thai's the Limit, Thai One On and Live and Let Thai.
About four years ago my good friend Steven Nistor asked me to look at some photos his younger brother Matthew had taken and posted online. He said that he thought his brother had real talent and that, if I agreed, I should send Matthew a little encouragement. I checked out the photos and Steven was right - I loved what I saw. I'm not articulate about visual art - I can't explain why I like what I like. And of the visual arts, photography generally seems the least expressive to me. But Matt's photos are calm while also being full of energy and feeling and I just truly enjoy looking at them. In that way it's kind of a more pure experience of art, that my reaction to it is only feeling and no internal monologue.
In the beginning, Matt was taking a lot of shots of Detroit and New York architecture like these:
What I like about the way Matt photographs buildings is that he seems fascinated not just with symmetry, but how to destroy it. These shots have a built-in vertigo, a loss of balance.
The same could be said of this recent image of his of people lying on the grass of a New York park. It looks like it was taken from the point of view of an out-of-control kite.
He's great with black and white. He knows how to use it to make things seem stronger, dirtier, more monolithic. But he can do a lot with color as well, even when it's bleached-out and still leaning heavily on its silhouettes.
And of course, because the brother's got chops, full-color, vibrant pictures are also something he does beautifully.
My band ended up basing the artwork for our last record around Matt's pictures and, because of it, for the first time we were actually happy with our CD's packaging. I was proud to have this image spread out across the center of the booklet:
I think that shot of a new york alleyway splattered in graffiti gore is a great representation of one of Matt's strong suits, urban landscapes. So is this shot of soot-soaked Los Angeles, taken over the crest of what looks like a pile of ash...
...and this ground zero view, in glorious blends of brown.
I think that most of all what I appreciate about Matt's photography is its tone. It's classy without being dull; pretty without being Hallmark-ish.
He seems to be always trying to find the most interesting angle to look at something from, and yet he does it without interjecting himself or any pretenses.
These qualities were present in abundance at Matt's wedding, which took place in the historic Guardian Building downtown, and which Kirsten and I were lucky enough to attend. Matt and his wife Amanda planned the whole things themselves, from the flowers to the fabric of the groomsmen's ties, and it was easily the most elegant thing I've ever been a part of as you can see in these wedding photos, brilliantly captured by Jessica Johnston of Jessica Johnston Photography.
Matt himself has taken a stab at the wedding photography business and I know it's going to lead to bigger and better things. He's got an unstoppable eye. And having been photographed by Matt myself for rock'n'roll purposes, I know what the guy is like to work with. A consummate professional and a real agreeable motherfucker. He practically never stops smiling.
Of course, his website and blog are another annoyingly perfect exercise in taste and function. Visit them.
Naturally, I was jealous. Because I've got a lot of talented friends too, friends who I should be propping out on these web pages if I wasn't so busy wasting time. And so this week I'm going to make a concerted effort to write about some of them. In fact, I'm even going to create a special Wingstroke segment for this occasion, called Friends in Thai Places.
Why "Thai Places," you ask. Because I'm forever in search of the perfect name for a Thai restaurant, and when I've found that name I'm going to open my own joint and become a man of wealth and leisure. So far my top picks are Thai-lenol, Thai's the Limit, Thai One On and Live and Let Thai.
About four years ago my good friend Steven Nistor asked me to look at some photos his younger brother Matthew had taken and posted online. He said that he thought his brother had real talent and that, if I agreed, I should send Matthew a little encouragement. I checked out the photos and Steven was right - I loved what I saw. I'm not articulate about visual art - I can't explain why I like what I like. And of the visual arts, photography generally seems the least expressive to me. But Matt's photos are calm while also being full of energy and feeling and I just truly enjoy looking at them. In that way it's kind of a more pure experience of art, that my reaction to it is only feeling and no internal monologue.
In the beginning, Matt was taking a lot of shots of Detroit and New York architecture like these:
What I like about the way Matt photographs buildings is that he seems fascinated not just with symmetry, but how to destroy it. These shots have a built-in vertigo, a loss of balance.
The same could be said of this recent image of his of people lying on the grass of a New York park. It looks like it was taken from the point of view of an out-of-control kite.
He's great with black and white. He knows how to use it to make things seem stronger, dirtier, more monolithic. But he can do a lot with color as well, even when it's bleached-out and still leaning heavily on its silhouettes.
And of course, because the brother's got chops, full-color, vibrant pictures are also something he does beautifully.
My band ended up basing the artwork for our last record around Matt's pictures and, because of it, for the first time we were actually happy with our CD's packaging. I was proud to have this image spread out across the center of the booklet:
I think that shot of a new york alleyway splattered in graffiti gore is a great representation of one of Matt's strong suits, urban landscapes. So is this shot of soot-soaked Los Angeles, taken over the crest of what looks like a pile of ash...
...and this ground zero view, in glorious blends of brown.
I think that most of all what I appreciate about Matt's photography is its tone. It's classy without being dull; pretty without being Hallmark-ish.
He seems to be always trying to find the most interesting angle to look at something from, and yet he does it without interjecting himself or any pretenses.
These qualities were present in abundance at Matt's wedding, which took place in the historic Guardian Building downtown, and which Kirsten and I were lucky enough to attend. Matt and his wife Amanda planned the whole things themselves, from the flowers to the fabric of the groomsmen's ties, and it was easily the most elegant thing I've ever been a part of as you can see in these wedding photos, brilliantly captured by Jessica Johnston of Jessica Johnston Photography.
Matt himself has taken a stab at the wedding photography business and I know it's going to lead to bigger and better things. He's got an unstoppable eye. And having been photographed by Matt myself for rock'n'roll purposes, I know what the guy is like to work with. A consummate professional and a real agreeable motherfucker. He practically never stops smiling.
Of course, his website and blog are another annoyingly perfect exercise in taste and function. Visit them.
Onion-esque
Ahhh. This just tickles me. I can't for the life of me figure out what was left out of this Japanese Reuters article that would explain its funereal tone, or even the fact that it was published at all. I mean, it's a guy getting caught at work for looking at porn. Not kiddie porn. Not animal porn. Just porn. And yet, you'd think he was selling state secrets to the Chinese or something the way the people quoted are reacting. It's surreal.
Granted at three hours a day, that kind of dickering and dangering is not exactly a premium return on his company's investment and is certainly absurd. But still, why the community outrage?
My favorite part is how they monitored him for eight months, rather than confront him the instant they realized he was breaking company policy - like they were FBI agents building a federal case against the mafia, instead of just some Japanese IT guys busting a lonely bureaucrat with a bottle of lotion in his desk drawer.
Key hilarity has been highlighted. Click the image to enlarge.
Granted at three hours a day, that kind of dickering and dangering is not exactly a premium return on his company's investment and is certainly absurd. But still, why the community outrage?
My favorite part is how they monitored him for eight months, rather than confront him the instant they realized he was breaking company policy - like they were FBI agents building a federal case against the mafia, instead of just some Japanese IT guys busting a lonely bureaucrat with a bottle of lotion in his desk drawer.
Key hilarity has been highlighted. Click the image to enlarge.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Kwame, LOL!
If they ever actually go through with dethroning Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, I hope it's not for using the city's tax money as his personal bling fund, or for cheating on his wife, or for lying about it under oath, or even for firing any police officer that threatened to pee on his thug parade. I hope it's for his flagrant, egregious use of LOL's.
The Detroit News - "Excerpts: Messages exchanged by Mayor Kilpatrick and Christine Beatty"
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Website Update
My guilelessly named site, danieljohnsonwrites.com, got some plastic surgery today. There's a new image stolen from my friend Mike's blog about his trip to Rome (the green stuff in the glass is Absinthe, I think), a new font, and a few pieces of new content.
Mostly this site is for my benefit - both the psychological perk of having all of the things I'm making in one place, and as an online resume of sorts that I can use to scare off potential employers who don't like pictures of Absinthe, poems about Salvia or mp3s of boy-on-puppet sex. But if you know anybody with time to kill - say, an invalid friend of yours - send them by.
Mostly this site is for my benefit - both the psychological perk of having all of the things I'm making in one place, and as an online resume of sorts that I can use to scare off potential employers who don't like pictures of Absinthe, poems about Salvia or mp3s of boy-on-puppet sex. But if you know anybody with time to kill - say, an invalid friend of yours - send them by.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Just Dreamy
When the heads begin to roll, when the blood runs thick through our streets and over our office carpets, when the stars fall from the sky like slender threads of filament, Oprah will be seated at the head of power. Oprah, nude underneath a drape of Dalmatian fur. And in her right hand she will hold a golden scepter with the gilded letter O at its crest. From the O, a piercing light will flit to and fro in simulcast, smiting the subversive and the unhappy. From her mouth, great proclamations; her husky voice will wash, broadcasted, over the earth, and 50,000 who hear it will wince as their ears melt and run like wax before drying shut. And another 200,000 will begin bleaching their bodies in preparation for the return of the Lord.
Oprah herself will be known by many names. The Beast. The leveler. Jemima Deville. And at her 100th birthday bash - slurping caviar and penguin meat, the Girls of Facebook dancing unclothed before her - she will tear the final seal, unleashing the Seacrest upon the earth and installing a thousand-year reign of peptalkcracy.
More dream revelations as they come to me...
Oprah herself will be known by many names. The Beast. The leveler. Jemima Deville. And at her 100th birthday bash - slurping caviar and penguin meat, the Girls of Facebook dancing unclothed before her - she will tear the final seal, unleashing the Seacrest upon the earth and installing a thousand-year reign of peptalkcracy.
More dream revelations as they come to me...
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Trimming For A Good Cause
This morning I trimmed my armpit hair for the first time in over a year. It had grown to four inches easily and I wanted to get a handle on it before my urge to braid it took over.
I'll be donating the trimmings to Whiskers For Hipsters, an organization dedicated to helping facial-hair challenged indie kids get the ironic mustaches and beards they've always wanted - now, before it goes out of style.
If you'd like to learn more about how you can take part in this important cause, contact me or write to hellen@whiskers4hipsters.org.
I'll be donating the trimmings to Whiskers For Hipsters, an organization dedicated to helping facial-hair challenged indie kids get the ironic mustaches and beards they've always wanted - now, before it goes out of style.
If you'd like to learn more about how you can take part in this important cause, contact me or write to hellen@whiskers4hipsters.org.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Tandy
Today marks exactly four months that I've been here at my new contract gig in swanky Birmingham. This one's a winner. I'm within walking distance of falafel and crack drink, there is enough downtime during the day for ample Scrabulous and the occasional illicit blog, and receiving a steady pay check has allowed me to cover my heating bills and finish out the winter without using Claire's barbies for kindling. All in all, a great opportunity for daddy. There's just one problem. Despite my serious, protracted and mischievous efforts, I have yet to get Tandy the receptionist to slip me a solid stock tip.
You see, Tandy is sitting in a very lucrative position. Literally. About eight feet in front of the reception desk there's a flatscreen TV as big as an elephant running a relentless stream of CNN all day long. And on the next wall over, in case the angle of this epic-sized screen isn't ideal, a second flat screen is tuned to the same news channel. It's like Bladerunner in there; the flashing current of gargantuan images casting a menacing pall over all who enter and reminding us that the end is nigh. In the midst of this Orwellian gloom sits Tandy our receptionist - pretty, 50ish, always immaculately done up - calmly going about her day. This means that for roughly eight hours a day, five days a week, 52 weeks a year - i.e. 2,080 hours annually - Tandy is being force fed a gush of news and politics produced in the exhaustive, yet clipped, manner of 24-hour ticker television.
Now, I know that Tandy has a whole other list of responsibilities beyond smiling at the foot traffic coming through the agency's doors. And I can only guess that at this point she's probably seriously fucking sick of CNN. But the way I see it, like it or not she's had no choice but to absorb that information by aural osmosis. While she goes about her job, some unused part of her brain is hearing and storing all that market data and educated speculation. I have to believe that years of that have turned her into a raging, if unwitting, news junkie; have given her a doctorate in CNN; that there are few people in the Metro Detroit area more qualified to riff on everything from the subprime lending crisis to the trends in rising crude oil prices than my company's perky receptionist. The way I imagine it Tandy doesn't even have to think about it, it's second nature. Her subconscious is chewing up all that gross information and spitting it back as razor sharp insight. Our confusing and random world appears clearly to her as nothing more than a field of indicators, flowing from side to side like so much wheat. Analyzing broad patterns is in her blood. Her favorite party trick is guessing the price of gas anywhere in the world and friggin' nailing it. At night she counts the S&P 500 instead of sheep and moans hot shit stock tips in her sleep.
Which leaves me, but a humble and clueless hipster, angling for just a taste. For crumbs from Tandy's sage table. I'm like one of Dorothy's ragtag posse, standing before Oz with his hands out. But I'm not asking for brains or courage. Or even heart. I just want to hear the name of a goddman company followed by the words, "Buy, buy, buy."
I haven't come right out and asked. Tandy puts up a good front, totally professional and prim. An unbreakable front. I know that any attempts I'd make at pumping her for info would be met with a wide smile and cold eyes. The closest I got to being explicit was a dead end. I surprised her a few months ago by walking in with her favorite smoothie from the juice store down the street and, while she was still flush with embarrassed thanks and the initial sugar rush of that first sip, I leaned in and said, "You know Tandy, I like my NASDAQ like I like my women; curvy and wildly unpredictable." I waited. Dead silence. "But lately I've been feeling the urge to settle down. Get a little stability..." She just grinned at me blankly and said, "Why Mr. Johnson, you make me laugh. Are you flirting with me?"
But I didn't buy it, her pretenses of being anything less than the Nostradamus of the stock exchange. Because I saw something, quick and small. A flash in her eye at the mention of the word "NASDAQ," and the slight tremors of lip movement as she stared off and noiselessly mouthed something about volumes and "effective spread."
Since then I've tried everything short of straight up grabbing her by her perfectly laundered collar and shaking her out of her coy stupor. It's a delicate dance, this game of cat and mouse we play. Sometimes I drop loaded suggestions into idle small talk, hoping for her to slip up and utter the sacred tip from which I'll make a fortune. Other times I continue with the bribe train, an onslaught of smoothies, baked goods and occasional flowers, hoping her heart will warm to me just enough to grace me with one meager hint. A lead. A nod in the right direction. That she'll toss me a nugget from that statistical goldmine floating around in her manicured head. Can't she see that I'm on my knees here, in a hellish drought of ignorance, my tongue extended and thirsting for just one tiny, precious drop from the heavens of her market omniscience.
And still she just sits there, day in and day out, batting her eyelashes, taking my smoothies and making chit chat with me that never seems to go anywhere beyond surface weather talk and gently chiding me for forgetting my pass.
You see, Tandy is sitting in a very lucrative position. Literally. About eight feet in front of the reception desk there's a flatscreen TV as big as an elephant running a relentless stream of CNN all day long. And on the next wall over, in case the angle of this epic-sized screen isn't ideal, a second flat screen is tuned to the same news channel. It's like Bladerunner in there; the flashing current of gargantuan images casting a menacing pall over all who enter and reminding us that the end is nigh. In the midst of this Orwellian gloom sits Tandy our receptionist - pretty, 50ish, always immaculately done up - calmly going about her day. This means that for roughly eight hours a day, five days a week, 52 weeks a year - i.e. 2,080 hours annually - Tandy is being force fed a gush of news and politics produced in the exhaustive, yet clipped, manner of 24-hour ticker television.
Now, I know that Tandy has a whole other list of responsibilities beyond smiling at the foot traffic coming through the agency's doors. And I can only guess that at this point she's probably seriously fucking sick of CNN. But the way I see it, like it or not she's had no choice but to absorb that information by aural osmosis. While she goes about her job, some unused part of her brain is hearing and storing all that market data and educated speculation. I have to believe that years of that have turned her into a raging, if unwitting, news junkie; have given her a doctorate in CNN; that there are few people in the Metro Detroit area more qualified to riff on everything from the subprime lending crisis to the trends in rising crude oil prices than my company's perky receptionist. The way I imagine it Tandy doesn't even have to think about it, it's second nature. Her subconscious is chewing up all that gross information and spitting it back as razor sharp insight. Our confusing and random world appears clearly to her as nothing more than a field of indicators, flowing from side to side like so much wheat. Analyzing broad patterns is in her blood. Her favorite party trick is guessing the price of gas anywhere in the world and friggin' nailing it. At night she counts the S&P 500 instead of sheep and moans hot shit stock tips in her sleep.
Which leaves me, but a humble and clueless hipster, angling for just a taste. For crumbs from Tandy's sage table. I'm like one of Dorothy's ragtag posse, standing before Oz with his hands out. But I'm not asking for brains or courage. Or even heart. I just want to hear the name of a goddman company followed by the words, "Buy, buy, buy."
I haven't come right out and asked. Tandy puts up a good front, totally professional and prim. An unbreakable front. I know that any attempts I'd make at pumping her for info would be met with a wide smile and cold eyes. The closest I got to being explicit was a dead end. I surprised her a few months ago by walking in with her favorite smoothie from the juice store down the street and, while she was still flush with embarrassed thanks and the initial sugar rush of that first sip, I leaned in and said, "You know Tandy, I like my NASDAQ like I like my women; curvy and wildly unpredictable." I waited. Dead silence. "But lately I've been feeling the urge to settle down. Get a little stability..." She just grinned at me blankly and said, "Why Mr. Johnson, you make me laugh. Are you flirting with me?"
But I didn't buy it, her pretenses of being anything less than the Nostradamus of the stock exchange. Because I saw something, quick and small. A flash in her eye at the mention of the word "NASDAQ," and the slight tremors of lip movement as she stared off and noiselessly mouthed something about volumes and "effective spread."
Since then I've tried everything short of straight up grabbing her by her perfectly laundered collar and shaking her out of her coy stupor. It's a delicate dance, this game of cat and mouse we play. Sometimes I drop loaded suggestions into idle small talk, hoping for her to slip up and utter the sacred tip from which I'll make a fortune. Other times I continue with the bribe train, an onslaught of smoothies, baked goods and occasional flowers, hoping her heart will warm to me just enough to grace me with one meager hint. A lead. A nod in the right direction. That she'll toss me a nugget from that statistical goldmine floating around in her manicured head. Can't she see that I'm on my knees here, in a hellish drought of ignorance, my tongue extended and thirsting for just one tiny, precious drop from the heavens of her market omniscience.
And still she just sits there, day in and day out, batting her eyelashes, taking my smoothies and making chit chat with me that never seems to go anywhere beyond surface weather talk and gently chiding me for forgetting my pass.
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