Smile, originally uploaded by tiki.robot.

talk freak

no explanation provided:
possibly, no explanation needed

^*Wal-Marts is singular.

• Juno – better than I expected.
• Saawariya – the first ten minutes were so bad we turned it off.
• Once – we saw it in the theater and liked it. still good, but this movie is best watched once.
• Sopranos – Season 5 disc 4. They all blur together. I can’t watch any more of these for a while.
• No Country For Old Men – Good, but far too violent to watch with Jess and the parents.
• Someone to Eat Cheese With – Much better than I was expecting.
• Planet Earth on Bluray – We got this to test Bob’s sweet new home theater system. The encoding quality was disappointing. The places where you can usually hide quantization noise (foliage, high-freq areas) were encoded very poorly. It was sad to see panning shots across the forest exhibit so many compression artifacts. These guys need to use an encoder tuned to such scenes. Note: don’t ask a video codec engineer to review encoding quality of Bluray discs unless you want to get an earful..
• Be Kind Rewind – Slowish, neat plot but could have been much better.
• Congorama – Whoa. Unexpectedly, my favorite KenFlix so far!
• War – dunno. Only Bob watched it.
• Wave Twisters – Great, but Bob hadn’t seen it, and the DVD wouldn’t play. Oh well.
• Futurama: Beast with a Billion Backs – Disappointing. We had such high hopes!
• Eastern Promises – Very intense. Good, but good thing Jess didn’t see this one.
• Stray Dog – Japanese noir. Kurosawa is always good.
  

Bob & Jess, anything to add? Did I forget any?

The Silver Crest is so sketchy. It’s like Sketch Central. I’ve lived next to it for six years and had never been inside. But look at all that great neon! Their sign proclaims: “We Never Close”. We decide we have to go.

Friday night Sam was driving us back from the spaz party at the Li Po Lounge, and we pass the Silver Crest. We’re full of Mai Tais and thumpy beats, but Bob and I have the same thought. We have to go.

We walk in and transported fifty years into the past. There is a bar in the back with a crowded pool table, but it’s 2am and the bar is just closing. We grab a booth in the front. These jukebox things on every table:

It doesn’t work and and eats Bob’s quarter. That probably for the best, since the jukebox is full of with Greek waltzes.

The menu is written on the wall. The food isn’t cheap, but we hope it’s good. The coffee is a ridiculous $2.75. Even for diner coffee, it tastes like crap.

They have these old pinball machines, which mang decides to check out while we wait for the food. There is a sign saying you have to be over 21 to play. We ask the server why, and she says they don’t want to encourage the kids to gamble. Whatever. The kids are all at Li Po, anyway, playing dice for drinks.

The food comes out. I’m surprised by how bad it is, but I don’t know why. I guess I expect shitty diners to have great food. That is not the case tonight. My hotcakes arrive with an entire stick of “butter” on top, which promptly slides off onto the table as soon as the server sets them down.

I’m disgusted but Bob thinks we need to come back. The Silver Crest has donuts, and they might actually be good. Maybe we’ll bring our own coffee next time.

Wow, I really wanna see this! It’s going to be at the Lumiere on 3/28. More videos over here and more beats over here:

• DJTEE
• IAMISEE
• Peter Miser

Who wants to go?

Stefan Sagmeister is one of the most influential graphic designers in the world working today. Since 1993 Sagmeister Inc., has focused on all things printed, including posters, brochures, books, and graphics and packaging for music clients…He’s created iconic album covers for Lou Reed, the Talking Heads, and the Rolling Stones…

Also, here’s a talk that he did at TED in 2004 that I recently watched while on the train. It’s called “Yes, design can make you happy.” I don’t know if design always makes me happy but this talk definitely did!

That’s a line from this article of sage advice called How to Road Trip by Leslie Harpold. Leslie passed away last year in December and her site’s been taken down, but I’m glad bits and pieces of her writing still live elsewhere online.