A dance track for your Tuesday enjoyment. Here is Agnes with “Release Me”.
J.P.
Mortality.
I never had the chance to meet Sam Storicks in person. We had chatted through Facebook and Twitter on numerous occasions, usually one liners here and there; I also followed his DJ gigs at various bear events all over the western part of the country. I kept tabs on his music selection and the specific remixes he chose for his performance sets. His commentary on the human experience often made me laugh out loud. He said things I wish I had the balls to say.
Sam’s partner found him unconscious on the 18th and he passed away Friday night. He would have been 31 in September.
I had always wanted to meet him for several reasons; even though he was 10 years my junior he was a better DJ than me and he had a great ear for music. He spun at gigs that I only dreamed of spinning at. And from what I have read from the hundreds of comments and memories and the like on Twitter and Facebook, he had one of those unique personalities that shined brightly wherever he was. And he had one of the better bear411 profiles out there – it was genuine, just as I pictured him to be.
Rest in peace, fellow DJ and internet friend. I’m certain you’re leading the party on the other side.
Rain.
I’m sitting in the car during my lunch hour. Usually I’d have the windows down but right now we have a torrential rainstorm in progress, so instead I listen to the pitter pat of the drops hitting the car.
I find the sound to be quite relaxing. I’m looking forward to a low-key, relaxing weekend. This is a good way to start.
Stars.
I have a lot of questions floating around in my head lately. I think I’m going to share some of them here on this blog and see if anyone has any explanation or answers to these questions.
In the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy declared that we would have a man on the moon by the end of the decade. We did, and around this time in 1969 man was setting foot on the moon and putting up an American flag. Everyone was glued to their television. My father has saved the Syracuse Herald-Journal from that monumental night. I would look at that paper as a kid and marvel that I was born before there was a man on the moon.
Fast forward to the 21st century. As Americans we can’t function without technology. Our toasters are electronic, our refrigerators can tie into e-mail, we have hundreds of useless television channels available to us via several different methods of getting this signal to us, our washer and dryer can synchronise their finishing time for our convenience and our car can tell us where to go. Why is it then that our current administration (and the one previous to it) has told us that it will take **twenty** years to put a man on the moon again. We have more technology in our telephone than we did in whole rooms back when we did this the first time around and we have shot people into orbit on a fairly regular basis since our first adventures into space so many years ago. Engineers used logarithms for their complex formulas back then, our home computers can now do all the computations for us.
Have we lost our pioneer spirit? Have we become so embroiled in political correctness and absolute safety that we can’t fathom the risks associated with space exploration anymore? Astronauts know that a ride on a rocket is not like taking a spin in an Oldsmobile; I’m certain that they know the danger associated with going to the moon and yet they sign up for their chance to reach the stars. Why do we hold them back? Have contractors and politicians and governmental organisations become so embroiled in red tape and corruption that it’s impossible to achieve anything outside of corporate greed these days?
I’ll say it again: we have become a nation built upon fear. We no longer have an adventurous or pioneer spirit. We are lazy, we are complacent and we are greedy.
I miss the days when we reached for the stars.
Thunderstorms.
This hot and humid summer has brought us a relatively good-sized crop of thunderstorms lately. Now that I’m not on-call for work every three or four weeks, I can enjoy storms for what they are and not what they’ll do to my life. I am enjoying this change.
I snapped this photograph on my way home from work just as a storm was rolling in. When I got home I shot some video of the rapidly rolling clouds; they’ll be used as a B-roll in one of my upcoming movies.
Routine.
Tom is not happy unless he is able to get outside first thing in the morning after he has chewed six to eight pieces of kibble and spit one or two of them into his waterbowl. At nearly 15 years old, I suppose he’s allowed to do that sort of thing. He has a routine and he likes to stick to it. If his routine is broken, or it’s the weekend, he will yowl loudly at the top of the stairs as if to do a reenactment of a stabbing scene and he will awake all that choose to sleep beyond 5:30. He even compensates for Daylight Saving Time. He’s smart like that.
I guess Tom is like his Daddy in some ways, because I’m pretty rigid in my morning routine as well. Not being a morning person, the only way that I can guarantee that I will be dressed when arrive at work is if I follow my routine to the letter, which involves acknowledgement that I am actually wearing pants, a shirt and shoes. I figure the underwear and socks don’t show so while I remember to wear them 99% of the time, there is always the risk that I won’t because they don’t go under the acknowledgment check before leaving for the day.
Earl tiptoes around the house in the morning during his routine because he doesn’t know what my mood is going to be like so he opts for the “live grenade” approach. I don’t think that I’m that unreasonable in the morning as long as I’m on my routine. I will give him credit that like Tom, who is smart enough to figure out Daylight Saving Time, Earl is smart enough to figure out my sleep walking in my actual sleep versus my sleep walking through the day up until about 10:00 a.m. or so.
That last sentence makes you nervous about yesterday’s picture of me driving on Thruway on my way to work, doesn’t it.
Creative Every Day.
My first photo taken during my endeavour to be creative in some way every day. This is a mundane shot, but it is what I see every morning. Part of my commute, this shot was taken just east of the Herkimer Interchange on Interstate 90 (New York State Thruway) eastbound.
In just a few miles from this location, I will pass a Suburu with an HRC bumper sticker and a bearded ginger cub in the driver’s seat. He nods at me, I nod at him. It’s what we do every morning. I haven’t figured out how to take his photo yet.
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| From Creative Every Day. |
Monday.
So here it is Monday afternoon already and I am basking in air conditioned comfort in the Acura in a parking lot in the J-town (the cute name for the city in which I work). My life is good, albeit rather quiet these days, though it’s moving along at a staggering pace. I don’t have a lot to bitch about these days; the job is a glorious thing and I have a settled down into a manageable routine. The social life is wonderful, though I’m not blogging and sharing as many pictures as I’d like to.
This past weekend was a long one for us, as we took a needed vacation day on Friday. The day was spent at Southwick Beach State Park with our friend scott. Southwick Beach State Park might be in Upstate New York but to me that stretch of beach along Lake Ontario is damn near heaven, whether it’s in the middle of July or in the middle of January. There is beauty to be found there and that beauty lies in the scenery, the attitude and the simplicity of it all.
I took a photo this morning on my commute to work that I plan on sharing when I get home tonight. I find it a little awkward to try to maneuver cameras and flash chips and computers whilst balancing my laptop on my belly in the Acura. I hope to take at least one picture everyday of something interesting in a mundane way. It’s part of the creative challenge I have given myself to celebrate being 42. I just need to find a better way to share it if I’m going to continue to do this internet in the Acura thing at lunch time.
Many of my contemporaries are abandoning their blogs and opting to go with the Twitter and Facebook updates instead. I have been tempted to do the same, but I don’t feel that my brain is exercised adequately when I have to express myself in less than 140 characters. It’s almost as if casual blogging has become the penmanship of the latest step of the internet age. And you know what, I have always been proud of my penmanship.
Southwick Beach State Park.
Earl, Jamie and I took (or had) a day off from work today. Our friend Scott joined us for a day at Southwick Beach State Park. It was a very good day.
