the things we think but do not say

PSPx2

Originally uploaded by georgeaye.

I have played with my wonderful new toy for almost two months now and I would have to say that I’m slightly obsessed with it. It’s beautiful, heavy, black and does all the things that it was meant to do: be cool.

Jerry (my mate pictured with me) convinced three others in the studio to get one, so we can now have potentially four way hot, psp on psp action. So far, I’ve only played Tiger Woods ‘heads up’ and it is a fantastically silly experience. Imagine two fairly grown men, bitching each other out with all the venom of twelve year olds in a playground. For example;

“Man you suck. You need to practice more.”
“Yeah… well I would if your mum would stop calling me every night.”

Fantastic. I can’t wait to for Colin McRae Rally to come out.

sucessories - boy

Originally uploaded by georgeaye.

There’s an entire world of corporate motivational crap everywhere, from classics like “You don’t have to be crazy to work here. But it helps!” signs, to huge banners that say things like “There is no I in TEAM”.

But some of the best/worst around is a small company called Successories. I came across this company’s fine work from those wonderful people at Skymall, who seem to be perfectly alligned in bringing the most condescending, personally insulting, meaningless, empty ‘pats on the back’ that I’ve had the misfortune to see.

This example here, poignantly titled, “P.R.I.O.R.I.T.I.E.S” shines a bright light onto the kind of schlocky, cliche ridden, drivel these writers come up with. This one I think is trying to encourage someone, presumably a busy, corporate dad to spend more time with his son; to “make a difference in the life of a child”, instead of the more common goals of making tons of money and screwing everyone that gets in the way.

But the worst part of this whole travesty, is the terrible photograph they chose. Without reading the tacky, god awful text, you’d think that this boy was asking “Why me?”, after being abused again by his dad’s friend. I mean come on, the kid’s looking off into the distance, he’s got his hands in his back pockets… all the tell tale signs of a boy that’s had one too many ‘bad touch’ moments.

Get this wonderful gift for an abusive parent here, or here.
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disney dad

Originally uploaded by georgeaye.

I’m working on a new project at work and as part of the research I had to go to Disney World, FL. I know. Tough going ain’t it?

The project is focused on children’s services and we were looking for examples of ‘best in class’ and who knows kids better than Walt?

As we walked around the resort, I saw tons of odd things; people endlessly waiting in lines seemingly for no reason, with no visible end in sight; hundreds and hundreds of parental units being more dorky than their kids; ugly young couples dressed in Disney wedding outfits spending their honeymoon’s in the Magic Kingdom and many more. One of the creepiest exhibits was the “Carousel of Progress” which sounded like the sequel to Tom Kelley’s book.
Oh, btw: Space Mountain. It never gets old. Splash Mountain never gets old either.

We stayed also at the new Michael Graves designed hotel, the Walt Disney World Dolphin Hotel. The site gives you a good picture. It was one of the most garish, overly treated, surface level designed spaces I’ve ever been in. Very overpriced and very disapointing. Even though it’s new, there were many very wrong, 80s colour palettes and checked patterns; enough to remind me of that Steve Gutenburg classic, ‘Three Men and a Baby”.

Originally uploaded by georgeaye.

The creator of many guises, metaphors, characters, rhymes, pseudonyms and beats, MF DOOM is power house producer.

After listening to “Vaudeville Villain”, realising that I had listened to DOOM in KMD when I was about 16, “King Geedorah”, “Madvillainy”, “MM… Food”, going back to listen to “Operation Doomsday” and freaking out along the whole journey… I am quite honestly fascinated with this guy.

Seeing him perform live with Madlib, at B.B. Kings in NYC for the release party of Madvillainy, I the two hardest working guys in hip hop today.

My friend April said just recently, that Kool Keith could have been what MF DOOM has become. I was struck by how right on she was. Keith and DOOM share many similar qualities; multiple alter egos, other worldly lyrics, lots of non mainstream production. I’ll have to think about this one some more… I think she might have hit upon something here…

Read the excellent Wire interview here.

After 15 years of pushing hip hop forward in unexpected ways, De La Soul (from Strong/Long Island, NY) come out with their best album in years, right up there with “Stakes is High” which is still listenable years after its release.

Somehow managing to feel like a band that’s just burst out on the scene, veterans of this level rarely make an album that’s as fresh and modern as this. Working with some of the cream of hip hops stars - 9th Wonder, Madlib, Common, Ghost Face, MF DOOM and Supa Dave West - “The Grind Date” has a great roster of artists.

Almost every track is a banger, with deep beats thumping their way through many comments about the state of hip hop. With a great mix of 70s samples throughout, with the occasional reminder of Kanye West, there’s a lot of soul to be found in this album.

My favourite tracks:

“The Future”, breaking out with a light hearted sample, ‘We are singing, you this message, through our music, reaching for a brighter new tomorrow…” the beat kicks with strings and guitar riffs overlaid with precision. Hook heavy and a banger.

“Much More”, steeped in 70s soul records, this track grows and grows… a banger.

“He Comes”, with Ghost Face’s lyrics ripping into Uday and Qusay. I’d previously heard this as an unreleased Pretty Toney album track… and it still kills.

“Rock Co.Kane”, An insane track with a choking beat that stutters and crashes into each new stanza. With MF DOOM spitting “He eats rappers as part of a complete breakfast” and “battle for your Atari cartridges or put your kicks up” Totally sick.

And if that wasn’t enough, the cd artwork is the best I’ve seen in ages. Remember to support your local music emporiums!

George, Me and Olivia

Originally uploaded by georgeaye.

How many 5 year olds can you take on?
Originally posted here by Jeff who in turn linked it from Waxy. Thanks for bringing this to everyones attention. There’s 49 pages of pure internet gold here.

I have a couple of nephews and neices about that age so I can visualise them pretty well. I think that if I didn’t know them directly and they were an anonymous mob of 5′ers then I’d be more inclined to attack them with real venom.

There’s also issues if any of them reminded me of any little tikes I’m already familiar with, since their unavoidable cuteness would pose a threat too.

But, if all the 5 years old being equal, and I was in top physical condition, I’d smash my way through at least 15-20 before anyone could say American Girl Place.

But, with my knee in the condition it’s in now, my mostly sendentry lifestyle, and the fact that my glasses or contacts would be broken/torn off my face/popped from my eyes within seconds, I’d say that I would be a bloody pulp within about 20 minutes.

The Further Adventures of Lord Quas

Originally uploaded by georgeaye.

I tried an experiment with this album. An experiment that I really ought not have been an exception, but rather the rule. I tried to not listen to any tracks off the album BEFORE it released. That means not downloading any tracks before hand, not looking for special unreleased cuts, not looking for special leaked bootlegs or mixes… none of that.

First off, it’s dope. Then secondly, it’s still dope.

The Further Adventures of Lord Quas follows Madlib/Quasimoto’s bizarre world of blunts, weed, jazz cats, rap cats, demo tapes, crate diggin’ and DITC (that’s diggin’ in those cakes). The tracks were characteristically short (for Madlib anyway) the beats were twisted and groovy, heavy with rare and obscure samples, often head noddingly good, and on occasion, sublime.

On first listen the album feels fragmented and confused. And after at least a few days of constant rotation, I still felt unsure about how well the format worked. So I tried a second experiment; I made a playlist of the first Quasimoto LP, “The Unseen” and the new one together so one album would flow into the other.

And then everything became clear.

All the foibles, the inconsistencies and sheer weirdness of the new LP, were all the things that I came to love about the first album, that now 5 years on, make it one of the best, most original hip hop albums of all time.

The highlights for me are “1994″ for it’s sneaky, ‘where dat come from’ guitar riff, “Rappcats Pt.3″ just for managing to fit that many shout outs into one song, and “Life Is…” for being so close to being really annoying but still managing to be a banger.

Stonesthrow don’t directly sell their records so get them here.

Just days before I made my mileage run, I went online and searched for any more information about airmiles in general. The most interesting place I found was the Flyer Talk forums. This place is an incredible resource for anyone who has airmiles with any major airline, has a credit card that gives miles or really anyone that’s into getting a good deal.

But in an act of shameless self promotion, I made a post to this forum just after finishing my movie to see what sort of reception I might get, from an audience already primed for these things. Well, for a brief time, I felt like da bomb. The post itself was a hit amongst the frequent flyer forum crowd (very influential in some circles) and the post was read about 3000 times.

My server got hammered. The file was downloaded about 1000 times and I maxed out my monthly allowance. I felt like I’d made it!

I may never have that sort of mini celebrity status again. Ahh… the thrill of very obscure and pointless fame.

mileage run

Originally uploaded by georgeaye.

At the time this seemed to make a lot of sense.

At the end of December 2004 I realised that I was some 5000 air miles shy of making “Premier Executive” status with United. This was the closest I’ve ever been. The best benefit of being Premier is getting 100% bonus miles for every trip.

So what to do… how do I get 5000 miles? It’s a number game in the end. The most miles, in the shortest time, spending the least amount of money.

So I rang up United customer service and explained my situation and found to me surprise that this is in fact a very common request and the phenomena is called doing a “Mileage Run”.

So the plan was this: Travel on Christmas Day and go from Chicago, to Oakland, to Los Angeles, then to Las Vegas, stay for 5 hours, then head back to Chicago. All within 24hrs.

The idea I had just before I took this stupid trip was to try to document the entire day so I could try to make a movie from it. And thankfully it was the only thing that saved me, since by the end of it, I became completely sick of travelling. Over the course of those 20 hrs, I took over 300 photos with my trusty Nikon D70.

Now, months on, have I got much to show for it?

Fuck all.

But was it worth it?

Hell yeah!

See Mileage Run The Movie here. It’s a 4mb zip file that expands into a Quicktime movie file. The soundtrack was “Run” by Ghostface. I heard it Just minutes before I left the house and it seemed perfect.

elephant sculpture sconce

Originally uploaded by georgeaye.



Wow. This is priceless. Who would have ever thought to mix the majesty and grace of a mighty Elephant with an original interior lighting solution?

The elephant, an animal that plays an important role in the ecosystem of the planet is seen here for the first time as the true light bearer that this wondrous creature really is.

It really captures the circle of life here. Elephant eats the grass and plants, the elephant dies, the plants and grass then in turn consume the elephant and then the dead elephant’s head is used as a candle stick holder.

WTF?

I will buy a pair of these sconces for the first person that can send me a real photo of an actual owner standing smugly next to this piece

Get yourself one here:


Elephant Sculptural Wall Sconce
Add the flicker of candlelight to sculpture with this piece paying tribute to one of nature’s most splendid creatures. Our Elephant sculpture trunk is curled around the torch meant to hold your taper candle. This Design Toscano exclusive is cast in designer resin. Candles not included. 12 1/2″ W x 8″ D x 9 1/2″H. (2 lbs. )