racism
Monday, February 28, 2005
My friend and i were discussing racism in cartoons and the media today, stemming from a conversation about Tex Avery. (My friend's last name is Avery and, he says, people ask him all the time if there's any relation...)
Racism has always been something that i've felt rather sensitive toward. I was exposed to it quite a bit as a kid growing up in New Orleans, from various family members making comments that should not be made in front of children, to my step-dad's collection of "picaninny" dolls when i was in my late teens, it was always around. When i was around 16 or so and my younger brother and i were having problems co-existing with my mom, one of our major issues with her, which we never really confronted her on, was the racist comments that she and my step-dad would often make. In nola (new orleans, la), i think it's pretty common for the white population to blame the economic problems of the city on the black community. Driving around the city, it's hard to see why whites don't recognize that, even when they have it hard, they still have more than their black counterparts. But the South has such a long history of racism and blame that it just doesn't seem to be able to escape it.
It's odd because i grew up there going to schools that were a pretty balanced mix of black and white students. I was friends with many black kids and never really related to racism on a personal level. But at the same time i think i was taught to fear the idea of black people collectively. Now that i live in Milwaukee ("Segregated, but not racist!"), i feel like there is a very marked absence of black culture in my life and i honestly miss it. It's such a large part of what nola is, and the truth of the matter is the white people there don't realize that it's part of who they are.
I was in high school when david duke was making his runs at governor or senator or both or whatever, and i have to say that in a state like Louisiana, he had a chance of actually winning. He didn't, thank God, but the fact that it was a possibility of happening is scary. I remember asking my Dad once what he thought of David Duke. I don't remember how the conversation came up, and it was a very quick exchange, but he told me that he didn't like David Duke, but he agreed with his positions politically. Something like that. Now, i'll give my dad some credit... Duke obviously didn't run on a platform of racism. He ran as a Republican on a platform that, if i recall right, had a lot to say about welfare reform, "family values", financial conservatism... Welfare reform from David Duke is nothing but back-door racism, c'mon. Anyway, it stuck out in my mind and i always wondered how my dad could separate the politics from the man as a justification. To be fair, i'm not telling you that my dad voted for david duke. I doubt that he voted at all, but growing up in new orleans this is what you had to deal with. If people weren't voting democrat they were quite possibly voting for david duke.
There was also this incident with my mom... My stepdad had this collection of picaninny figurines or whatever that he'd bought at flea markets and such. He has this little shelf thing that was about 18" wide and looked like the front porch of a dilapidated wooden house on which all of the figures were arranged, and it hung on the wall in the kitchen. Yes, it was on the kitchen wall. See, people see picaninnies as these kitschy little icons of, i don't know, southern country life or something ridiculous like that. They know in the back of their minds that it's racist and vulgar, but if there's nothing to point that out to them, then it's a moot point. Well, one day my friend Ron, a black guy, came over to visit. Now, Ron is a very affable person and is able to find humor in other people's ignorance. But as my mom related the story to me of him sitting in the kitchen and her realizing this was on the wall, "oh, i was so embarrassed," she said. But it struck me that she wasn't embarrassed of the fact that she had this in her house at all. The memory of it makes me want to go back and smash that display on the kitchen floor.
I don't really remember when it was that i became sensitive to the issue of race, because i know that i haven't always been. I do remember getting this sweater, probably in my senior year of high school, that was very colorful with lots of red and orange and green. I still have it somewhere in the basement. I began referring to it as my "multi-cultural sweater," which was a naive high school thing, but to me, back then, it symbolized part of the philosophy that i had begun to take on.
It's not like i grew up in this environment of hate, not in the least. The point is that there are these latent ideas that manifest themselves in our actions, in the things that we consume and create. How do we stop them? What are we supposed to do about them? Sometimes i feel like overt attempts to counter racism from a white guy would seem patronizing. Is it enough to just not be racist, and to raise my kids not to be racist? It is some contribution. But what else?
Most images were taken from this site: http://www.ferris.edu/news/jimcrow/
It's good readin'.
posted by j. Permanent Link
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review in april's wire
Thursday, February 24, 2005
so i got a phone call today. of the 7 or so albums that Soutrane Records sent to The Wire Magazine, the sophrosyne ep literate was one of the ones they've decided to review for the april issue. now, that being said, there's really not much of an indication that it's going to be a good review. but you figure if they're choosing amongst several disks, they'd choose the ones that they can at least speak positively of. at least, that's my hope.
i don't really expect anything much to come of it. hopefully perhaps more hits to sophrosyne.net but who knows. esplanade.mp3 has gotten about 60 hits so far this month, but not much in the way of commentary. bastards.
speaking of the sophrosyne site, i suppose it's time for an update. i like the dumb little flash site, but it's such a pain in the ass to update. time for the wonderful world of html. i need to add some of the newer mp3s there and have the site reflect the new ep and all... before april, i suppose!
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today is gran turismo 4 day!
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
So Gran Turismo 4 comes out today. Hopefully i'll be able to find a store that has it in stock before it's time to go home, but i have my doubts. The closest store to the office, Gamestop, doesn't get it in until after 3pm. Figures, that's right when i need to go home!
The fact that i'll be able to drive old volkswagens just makes this game that much more appealing.
Granted, these screenshots are all from race replays, not actual game play. The replays are known for being extremely cinematic and graphically... they're fuckin awesome.
This was the one car i never managed to win in GT3. The Calsonic one step below this one was by far my favorite car (with the exception of the F1 cars).
That's some detail, eh?
Yay flight!
That stretch of road just says "200 mph!"
This should help me scratch my Karmann Ghia itch.
bling.
ok, i have to go call around in search for it.
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teh blog
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
i have now officially linked to the blog from my main site. there are a few reasons why i have withheld up until now. first of all, i wasn't sure how willing i would be to truly keep up with it. i wasn't sure if it would really hold my interest, or anyone else's for that matter. whether it's holding anyone else's interest remains to be seen, but i think i've done a relatively good job with keeping it updated.the second primary reason for not placing it in my main navigation was that it kind of takes the reigns off of site visitors. up until now i haven't really made its existence known except in linking to particular posts (links to the last post about the new song Esplanade on mp3 blogs, for instance) or in leaving comments on other people's sites. i do encourage interaction and feedback, but i also hesitate to open myself up to scrutiny, particularly from people that may know me personally. i shouldn't say scrutiny, because i am not opposed to criticism. thanks art school! but i don't like the idea of having to withhold my thoughts based on who may or may not see them.
that being said, some people see their blogs as their place to "truly be themselves" without regard for the possible repurcussions on personal relationships. however, i've given a significant amount of thought in the past to what the intentions of created works are and i believe that you can never remove the audience from the creative process. just as i can't compose a new song or artwork without considering how it will be received (though this is not a driving force), i can't write without considering how my words will be taken.
i don't believe that i'm censoring myself, particularly, in my posts, but i also admit that i'm not particularly forthcoming about my personal life. but this isn't really a document of who i am as a person, so much as it is a reflection of my thoughts on creativity, art, music, and their effects on my life. i didn't really plan it as such, but that seems to be the shape it has taken.
it is what it is; enjoy it. Blogger has changed its commenting policy, so you are no longer required to be a registered user to leave comments. feel free. we'll see where things go from here.
p.s. - blogs without images are like food without salt. expect lots to look at.
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Roy Lichtenstein
I've been meaning to do this for a while, with the intention of possibly doing something of a series highlighting artists. I thought i'd start with Lichtenstein because a) i love his art, b) he turned me onto pop art as a genre, and c) he was the second artist to pop into my head. First is perhaps the most obvious, Monet, which i will get to, perhaps even next. But you don't get much more cliche than starting with Monet.I began to appreciate Lichtenstein the first time i went to Wash D.C. My wife and i went to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and i really got to see one of his paintings up close. You can see the drawn lines around the circles where a pattern was laid, traced and filled in. Something about seeing and understanding his creative process helped me to identify with his art and embrace it. With Lichtenstein, as with many artists, the more you look into the work the more you see that it's not just about dots and lines. He may have started with this thought of proving that men can be as exact as machines, but his personal vision and creativity are more evident in his body of work as a whole. You realize that the techinique isn't the art, but the filters through which his compositions are created.
Drowning Girl
Explosion
Girl with Hair Ribbon
Interior with Mirrored Wall
I saw this piece in the Guggenheim in New York a few years ago, a favorite of mine beforehand and even more so now that i've seen it in person.
Interior with Water Lilies
Little Big Painting
Mural with Blue Brushstroke
I gave my older brother a book about this painting for Christmas a few years ago that detailed the meaning and relevance of every shape and object in the painting, all references to other artists, genres, and even other phases of Lichtenstein's work, all represented in this mural. (I also had the chance to see this painting through the glass doors of the building in which it is hung in NY, NY.)
Preparedness
Rouen Cathedral
The Rouen Cathedral series is one of my favorites. I've always loved Monet's Rouen Cathedrals, and Lichtenstein adds a whole other dimension to them, transforming them into 2 Color dot-pattern compositions that represent not only his style and the subject matter, but also reference Monet and his work.
You have to love that Lichtenstein's Interiors have other paintings and sculptures in the room, creating this dual-layer art-within-art, the second being more representational than the first.
Sunset
Woman In Bath
i think what is conveyed in Woman in Bath is a certain sense of calmness. The good ol' "calgon take me away" syndrome. With the muted blues, and the absence of black lines, i think the effect of this piece is one of relaxation and serenity. And here's a thought: Beauty brings us comfort.
Truth? It is in the case of my wife... but i'm a shallow person.
http://www.lichtensteinfoundation.org is a great site for browsing though Roy Lichtenstein's art and learning more about the artist. Take the time out to see more of his work.
posted by j. Permanent Link
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osCommerce
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
I was introduced to osCommerce this week, an open source e-commerce "solution" (i hate this use of the word) done in php. has anyone else used it? i'm working with it for a small project at work and am thinking of using it for future e-commerce freelance projects. the problem is the html it creates. everything is a nested table. when you view the source of these pages... holy crap is it ugly. so i'm planning to go through it and start rewriting some of the functions (yay open source!) to output divs and h1's and whatnot, but i have a feeling that the further i get into it, the more complicated it's going to become.
<table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td height="14" class="infoBoxHeading"><img src="images/infobox/corner_right_left.gif" border="0" alt="" width="11" height="14"></td>
<td width="100%" height="14" class="infoBoxHeading">Languages</td>
<td height="14" class="infoBoxHeading" nowrap><img src="images/pixel_trans.gif" border="0" alt="" width="11" height="14"></td>
</tr>
</table>
<table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="1" class="infoBox">
<tr>
<td><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" class="infoBoxContents">
<tr>
<td><img src="images/pixel_trans.gif" border="0" alt="" width="100%" height="1"></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center" class="boxText"> <a href="/contact_us.php?language=en"><img src="includes/languages/english/images/icon.gif" border="0" alt="English" title=" English " width="24" height="15"></a> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><img src="images/pixel_trans.gif" border="0" alt="" width="100%" height="1"></td>
</tr>
</table>
it could be so much simpler!
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betraying emotion
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
(emotion eric)
I was on Jason Kottke's site and found this post about this article. So interesting, it makes me want to change careers. But i won't.
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mardi_gras 2OO5
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
I was going to find a few images of mardi_gras to post today, but found... a lot. No b00bs-for-beads pics, these are more of a reflection of mardi gras as it is in my memory, which is to say fairly good-natured, colorful, fun, and extremely exciting. Seriously, it's an invigorating experience.
The St. Augustine (High School) marching band has always been held in high esteem in nola as one of the most entertaining and engaging bands to see and hear. They're the first band i can ever remember playing, marching and dancing at the same time.
Mardi_Gras marching bands have been a huge influence on the music i've been creating over the last year.
Rex, The King of Carnival. Rex wears more make-up than your Great Aunt.
The uptown parade route runs down Napoleon Ave. and St. Charles Ave. toward the French_Quarter. Seeing the parades under the oak trees is the way it's supposed to be done.
Bourbon_Street. Do it once, but don't do it again.
It's like being front-stage at a concert, jam-packed with people. Everyone's pushing and shoving and you're just waiting for the entire crowd to begin falling over while you try to protect your girlfriend or wife or whoever's next to you from being trampled underfoot.
Something about the captains on their horses just seems so... KKK...
If you say so.
The flambeaux carriers always tripped me out. They have coffee cans mounted between the flames that people try to throw coins into. Which leads to money all over the street, which the flambeaux carriers bend down to pick up, leaning over with their flames right next to your head. What a crazy ass idea.
Pete Fountain is a mainstay.
I don't think i've ever actually spent mardi_gras day here on Canal Street (downtown). I've always stayed uptown on St. Charles where you can claim a small space to (attempt to) call your own.
There's a guy's face in there somewhere.
The image of this float (from the Rex parade mardi gras morning) has practically become the mardi gras logo.
Stupid Klan.
This was my view of mardi_gras 2005, the nola.com paradecam. Bleh.
Most pics were taken from these sites:
http://www.bourbonstreetparty.com/bourbon_street_pictures.htm
http://www.nomcvb.com/imagegallery/imagedisplay.cfm?cat=12
http://photos.neworleans.com/mardi_gras/
http://bywater.org/
This bywater site is about a neighborhood in New Orleans just outside of the French Quarter... it's a pretty cool site with a lot of nice pictures.
<edit>
i made some alterations to this post to reduce the number of people finding this page through searches for "mardi_gras 2OO5 b00b pics"
</edit>
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Musicians Wanted
Monday, February 07, 2005
I've been looking for a good guitarist to work with for a while now, so i thought posting here might do a bit of good. Honestly, i'm open to working with just about anyone, with the exception of a bassist or a saxophone player, as i just personally don't like the sound of a saxophone. But mostly i'd like to find a guitarist that:
- has some interest in jazz, electronic music, indie rock
- has a sense of rhythm (you'd think this would be obvious, but...)
- can record high-quality
- can send wav files over the web
- decent improv skills
- an ear for melody (i'm not looking for a rhythm section)
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Original Meters Reunion
Friday, February 04, 2005
There's no time like Mardi Gras to make a New Orleans native seriously homesick. I haven't been to Mardi Gras since 1997, and every year i say "next year..." It always seems to turn out that March - May is a much more opportune time for me to take a trip home. This isn't such a bad thing, though. If there's any event in nola that rivals Mardi Gras, it's the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.
A few years back i got the song "They All Asked for You" by The Meters to play for my daughter. My mom sang it to my brothers and i when we were young and we loved it, so i figured she would too. (She does, but she likes Mardi Gras Mambo better.) Then Mardi Gras came around, and with it the homesickness, so i found a bunch of mardi gras music to listen to, several of which were also by The Meters. I wound up with a few other Meters songs in my small collection and recognized some of them from samples in other songs... beastie boys, meat beat manifesto, public enemy too, i beleive. So i started to slowly collect more stuff from them and began really listening to it a lot because, honestly, it is very kid-safe. Rarely a swear word, always upbeat...
(portrait by Wayno)
Truth of the matter though, is that i was hooked. It's really just very good music, besides the obvious connection to home for me. I mean, it sounds like new orleans. So i learned the other day that the original Meters are regrouping to play the 2005 Jazz Fest. I am seriously considering going. If you need convincing, hunt down the song A Message From the Meters. "IN THE ANNALS of popular music, the Meters are to R&B what the Beatles were to pop--innovative players who helped to define a magical musical moment." Definately something to be excited about.
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office paintings
Thursday, February 03, 2005
i did these two paintings about a year ago (on office time, even) to hang on the walls in the office. i wound up keeping the smaller one in my office, still on the easel.
they're obviously based on the Random Composition Controller, which obviously needs a much better name. But i've never thought of anything for it. i don't show it off too often for fear of other people jumping on my idea. i'm not sure what kind of intellectual property rights i can claim for the output of the flash file.
i have been working on figuring out image output options from SWFs with a friend, though no simple solutions really seem to be available. "simple" being the operative word. but if i can find something, it'd be nice for this piece to generate jpgs of the compositions it creates. anyone know of any good swf image-output options? let me know.
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tablelessness on my mind
| table | less | ness |
We've been talking about tableless design in this "webpro" mailing list that i'm a member of. It's been your typical back and forth without much in the way of, uh, discovery. But whatever. I always love a good debate. Anyway, thought i'd post the message i wrote this morning in its entirety before i cut off the last paragraph or two and hit send.
Anyone know where stats can be found regarding user agents. I have to wonder what percentage of web users are using non-PC based browsers. My other issue is in wondering how these agents display the websites you browse. (I'm not lucky enough to have a web-enabled PDA or cell phone, nor am I particularly inclined to buy one to read fark.com while driving to work :)) I understand that there are other issues, like screen readers for the blind, etc, but that's not really what I'm questioning.
What I'm wondering is why as site designers we should really be all that worried about what a site is going to look like on a pda. You'd think that the pda developers should be more worried about creating a product that works with the already-existing web. Sure, one day we could all have refrigerators that can browse the web so that we can order milk. But somehow I doubt the possibility of this becoming ubiquitous. Does this also mean that we need to account for closet doors that will allow us to order new sweaters? Will closet door displays differ from fridge displays? Will all websites look like blogs? Will cars fly? Can I press this button and receive a ham sandwich? Mmm.
I'd think it's more likely that we'd simply have multiple computers in the home, much in the same way that we have multiple TVs and radios. And most likely they'll all be one device.
Where we are now, I see it as such: I can use tables and css together very efficiently to achieve things that I never could do with either alone. These are the tools that I use in my trade, and I should use them the best I know how to create the end product I am trying to reach. If Sergio can't see j-ink.com effectively on his cell phone while sipping lattes in Manhattan, maybe he'll check it when he gets home!
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