home about | services artwork blog

All-England Summarize Proust Competition

Wednesday, January 30, 2008



I came about this clip in a rather round-about way... though I guess most things on the web are rather "stumbled upon." I'm working on this one-page mardi gras Flash "card" thing at work (in AS3!) and there's an illustration of a guy that reminds me of Marcel Proust. I was trying to think of a way that I could slip a reference in to the site, and thought of putting Swann's name, from Swann's Way, on the character's hat, but I could not remember his first name (Charles). I got on wikipedia and found a list of references to In Search of Lost Time (or Remembrance of Things Past)in popular culture. Bla bla bla. There's a monty python clip on youtube, so of course I start to watch it. I didn't get to finish it until just now, though, 8 hours later -- and I come to find that the end of the skit is rather tasteless! How at odds with the nature of Proust!

I suppose there's no less irony in trying to summarize seven volumes in 15 seconds than there is in contrasting a work of profound beauty with utter crassness.

Labels: ,

posted by j. Permanent Link 0 comments

Earl

Monday, January 28, 2008



I don't know where I found this, but it makes me laugh every time I see it. That baby is not a happy sandwich.

posted by j. Permanent Link 0 comments

First parades - Mardi Gras 2008

Sunday, January 27, 2008


Them dudes on the float rappin about LSU. Aw yeah.


This weekend was the first real weekend of parading in New Orleans -- and the kid's very first Mardi Gras parades. I took them to a parade Saturday night uptown, me elli and graham. It had been raining earlier in the day, and was even still a little misty as we were leaving the house. But by the time we parked, which was surprisingly easy, it was a really nice night out. A bit chilly, but I'm all jaded on the cold now. So we stayed long enough to fill up a bag with beads and cups and stuffed animals, until graham had to potty. Then home to bed.

Today, Sunday, it was really nice out. It's kinda hard to gauge how long a parade is going to take to make its way along its route, so I guessed a bit wrong and caught just the end of the first in back-to-back parades uptown this afternoon. But we were there for the whole second one, this time with kim and the baby, who both had a great time. It's really kinda ridiculous how much stuff people on the floats throw to very small kids. Graham can barely catch anything as it is. Elise is really getting into it, though -- chasing after floats, grabbing stuff from under people's feet... It meant a lot to finally get to take them to a parade, Elise especially. I've been talking to her about Mardi Gras since she was born, listening to the Meters and Professor Longhair, telling her how much fun it is and how one day we'd get to go. And here we are! And they DID have a ton of fun...

But man, we went to a parade in Metairie tonight, who knows which one. When I was in high school the Metairie parades were the place to be. It was probably cause we thought we'd see a lot of girls there or something. Not that I ever talked to girls before I was 16. But it was full of all these white gangsta wanna-be 16-20 y/o dudes drinking mickey's and pullin up they pants. We got there like 2 hours after the parade started and thought maybe we'd missed it at first. But we were catching it a good ways down the parade route, so we parked and walked to hang out and wound up waiting for half an hour or so for the parade to come. Then by the time it got to about float 16, the parade just stopped. The driver of the tractor pulling the float even got down and went and hung out with the other tractor drivers or something. Who knows. We just sat there wondering for about 10 minutes, then decided it was too late and cold and we'd just had too much Metairie. So we went home.

No parades tomorrow or Tuesday that I know of, but Wednesday night there are 3! uptown, yay! Happy Mardi Gras!

Labels: , , , ,

posted by j. Permanent Link 0 comments

SimCity Classic was the game that started it all!

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

This'll be a quick post... I never was much of a SimCity fan, not because I didn't like it but I guess I was just never really exposed to it. Until I lost my cell phone and replaced it with an ebay'd Palm Treo, anyway. I downloaded a copy of PocketCity, a SimCity "port," and it piqued my curiousity, which eventually lead to me finding that you can play "SimCity Classic" online.


(holy crap that's a big animated gif!)

Go build some funs!

Labels:

posted by j. Permanent Link 0 comments

looking at nothing to see everything

Tuesday, January 08, 2008




This is the other thing that trips me out, when you see pictures of players in mid-action and they're seemingly looking at nothing. It's especially evident in this shot because they're both doing it. Kinda like Gilbert Arenas in that last picture, you kinda assume they must be in the middle of turning their heads or something, but that's totally not it. First of all, you see this much too often. Secondly, perhaps I'm being generous here but I tend to give professional basketball players, at least the good ones, the benefit of the doubt that their motions are always intentional. And last, they're almost always looking at some spot on the floor.

This is what I think: when you're dribbling you're not looking at the ball. You know where it is just like you know where you got your shoes. But when you've got the ball and there are defenders all around you, especially this one dude up in your face, you've got to be hyper-aware. They're not looking at a spot on the floor so much as taking in as much information around them as possible. Look at one guy and you're losing everyone else. Look at an area and you can take in everything in your peripheral vision. Consider what Michael Finley can see right now. He can see the ball, he can see if this dude (who IS that?) is gonna stick his arm out to strip the ball, he can see whomever is behind the defender and any action that's going on there, he knows that the basket is just beyond his range of vision to the left, and he can probably see Tim Duncan standing there near the goal waiting for him to just give him the ball.

I love this aspect of the sport -- watching the intense physical and mental control that they have, and their ability to concentrate and react to all of these minute details with relative speed and accuracy. It'd be nice if network television would put some games on before the seaons is half over!

And speaking of games on TV, you'd think fans in New Orleans might follow the Hornets more if they would show some of their games on local tv. Stupid cable.

Labels:

posted by j. Permanent Link 0 comments

Let me just slip in here and, uh...

Monday, January 07, 2008



I love these kinds of photos in sports journalism, basketball especially because you can see the players' faces so clearly. It's not someone soaring through the air, leaping over a defender for a huge dunk, but it could easily be just as pivotal a play. This is Celtics point guard Rajon Rondo stealing the ball from the Wizards' unsuspecting Gilbert Arenas. If you watch basketball at all you know it's an extremely fast-paced game. This appears to be taken as the Wizards are setting up in their half-court offense, one of the few times the game slows down. Rondo reaches in for the ball before Arenas even has enough time to turn his head, much less protect the ball. I love that there is so much story line in what appears to be one of the more mundane parts of the game.

posted by j. Permanent Link 0 comments