schnoidlblog

been really angsting lately, I just don’t know how long I am going to have to struggle in the dark. One of my clients finally landed a job for us, should make a few grand I hope, but there’s no start date, and that could mean anything. my other client is going to send a few hundred as soon as she gets her check, but again…that’s when? so, yeah, same as we do every night Pinky…

poor Bhu, she’s doing her best to stay strong, but she’s such an emotional person, it’s really a lot on her. lots of times she falls asleep sobbing, and it breaks my heart. Me, I wake up and start twitching and jerking when it occurs to me how much money I have to come up with, and I know there will be no going back to sleep now, so that’s when my days begin. They usually end around 6am when I crash. these late nights are the only time my head clears enough to focus.

if you haven’t seen it yet, boy you’re gonna. here is Bhu’s new video, killing it live. now you know. it’s the missing piece, or at least one of the biggest one. now she can start telling the world to fucking notice already. also, made her a super simple site, which will evolve but it’s a start.

more miracles please, faster ones would be nice too.

got the idea I have been needing to congeal my reel project. I’ve been wanting an excuse to model a few different objects, like a wild car or three, a couple bizarre buildings, and also some kind of graphic interface thing (like, uh, Minourity Refork). had been thinking of some kind of custom holo shopping interface thing. the missing link: it’s the transitions between items, can make all kinds of flappy ka-jing ways to get from one thing to another. Ok, now let’s go learn how to do that…right back.

one thing i have noticed here, maybe I have bitched before: when it comes to criticizing, Germans are often not at all shy about blurting right in and telling you exactly how your actions are not being conducted with sufficient apparent competence, no problem. when it comes to owning up to even the most slightly unpleasant admission about their own information though, just forget it. Going to have to cancel? Just don’t call. Promised to do something but now don’t have time? Make no mention, then refuse to respond to emails for a week or more afterwards. it’s a bit like the supposed practice in many Asian countries of only answering yes (Korean has yes, and kind-of-yes…no “no”), even if no, that town is in the complete opposite direction, because somehow it is ruder to say no than to completely trash somebody’s larger plans.

Germany has its own version of the copyright ASSHOLE culture, in the form of a piece of shit called GEMA. Almost any youtube video you click on here, chances are you’ll get a black frame saying little more than GEMA decided to fuck it off. There has been a bunch of grumbling lately here over their bulldozing new regulations onto the nightlife here, which could have some meaning if they were actually going to ever funnel some money back to techno producers (good DJs get paid maybe 500€/hour, and pay about 2€ per digital track that last 7 around minutes), but I very much doubt anything remotely like accurate tracking is in their plans. Big clubs are all whining that oh noes it will mean an extra 100K/year in fees, with boogerhain in particular whimpering it might even mean they’ll have to close (bitchwhores, like your credibility is anything more than zero), but now there is some ridiculous arbitrary guideline about digital files…if you copy them to an external drive, you must pay 13¢ per track. If your computer crashes and you restore them from a backup, pay all fees all over again. This is completely baseless random bullshit that just fucks over lots of little people, and helps…who? lawyers? Aggravating. people are raising holy hell about it, but I guess somewhere money talks, and the politicians are just rolling over as fast as they can.

One more nail in the coffin that was Berlin. I knew this bubble wouldn’t last. Wonder where I am living next? I certainly have zero plans to live out my years in this country. Neither does Bhu; she’s been here 11 years and steadfastly refuses to learn the language. I was all dutiful and self-assured when I first got here, but the more time i spend with it, the more I think my initial horror was well placed.

Big news from the film effects world: fuck off. If you haven’t heard, Rhythm and Hues, the big VFX company that just aced the Oscars is declaring bankruptcy in the US (which is not to say they don’t have pixel mines flourishing in peasant enclaves in dirtbag countries elsewhere), and they are only one sad story among very many. Just the sort of encouragement my diligently-tutorial-inhaling sputterbot needed to hear. But honestly, i only pointed my dinghy in that direction because I sniffed that’s where the money might be in Berlin; i sure don’t want to spend my days compositing dust and lens flares into shitty blockbusters, though i’d sure as fuck rather do that than be broke and sleep away the pain. Every day, make new plans. What i would really like to be doing is modeling, making cool objects that other droids can scarf off into other futures. I have such deep pools of weirdness that are going completely unused; it’s a damn shame how little i have made any use of any of that, at all. Good if I can make money to support that flow; dumb if i make money but only come home and pass out and never spurt the peculiar magic. Even dumber if i’m just broke and do nothing, which has been most of the whole last year (cough, decade).

Sunny outside. Will be warm enough to mud up a frisbee soon.

No, you shaddap.

the modem? they didn’t order it. finally able to order it 9 days later. came 5 after that.

seriously.

but, at looooooooooooooooooong last, we have internet. OURS! It’s like…yes.

which is more significant, that? or the fact that I GOT MY GERMAN ID CARD!! the gentle-eyed lady officer was sure to smack her chain and tell me, as late as i was, she could reset the process, but then she said ok, let’s get you sorted. It so could have gone all the way the other way, kicked directly out the EU for 6 months. For real. Unclench.

a friend gifted me a one year subscription to digitaltutors.com, a site with about 20K tutorial videos on a shit-ton of VFX and animation software. I have unlimited access, now all i have to do is start chewing. already have over 20 pages of notes (which will type down to like, 4.), and I’ve barely begun. Quick diversion this week into all the advanced After Effects i could gobble; showed up to teach first day of Intro to After Effects class last Tuesday…to find my students from last semester, expecting an advanced class, for which I was completely unprepared. Actually only 3 of the 6 were there, and I was so flashed by it all that I got permission to end it at lunch. Asked them to reschedule me a half or full day, and I’m sure I just blew a bunch of whatever capital I had there. Oopsie!! but it’s cool, I am learning expertish level knowledge about stuff i’ve been shining by on, and learning lots of other wee snappy bits.

Next, more Cinema 4D, the pretty ok 3D program I use, then hopefully Maya, the insane gigabeast of a god-level creation engine. I wanna learn to be a kickass modeller. Now. In my dream world, I continue on with Nuke, a righteous compositing app, and Houdini, the thing you can make a forest fire, a tidal wave, a city in embers, medical waste, the whole shbazzang. Gotta year to gobble. I called stuffing.

also, in fine news, Bhu has some killer tracks up online now, the ingrown studio EP from a full year ago, and lots of tracks from the Südblock show (see 3 posts down, from 3 months ago…somebody has been neglecting all you fine imaginary elves. sowweee), which are really her at her best. Start with the live version of Sadness, then skip up to Ball n Chain. Fucking well hope 2013 is her year. Mine too. 2012 has been one hell of a shaky ride. So far….

lookit the pritty pitcher I made with a good friend of ours. Hug it out!

new video reel is finally up and online. nothing from old reel. not quite as varied and hectic, or as long, as last reel; everything new since moving to Berlin.

Bhu’s job on Friday sucked. Place is fucking huge, but they are vigorously pre-clue. Bars are so deep that both bartender and customer have to lean way over to order and to pass drinks/cash, dumb. Sound was mostly horrible, tinny noise, though the music was pretty devastating, heavy experimental industrial; really needed a sound man with weapons. Last DJ had a clue, she went rugged hard into the techno world, and recognized the EQ needs. Mainly, the walls were dusty unfinished concrete, with plenty of mildew spores shivering in search of my moist lungs for their future home, many of them successful in their search. Cough, cough fucking cough. Be the sickness.

put a ribbon on it, some heels, stand her on the curb wavin…

my first batch of paintings in…holy shit…nearly four years is finished, and online!

ALERT THE MEDIA!

and yes, they are very much for sale. ffffuck are they ever, we are ready to deal! ample parking, free playpit for the kiddees, we’ll even walk your dog! and yes that means something dirty.

finally inaugurated my painting studio-ette this weekend. dragged the last few components through the door…little water squirter, tube of medium, tube of (runny) modeling paste, a light…put up some shelves at the right…found some pushpins (plastic? fuck my life)…found my brushes, and cracked it open. meant to start with a really thick base layer, super textured, but the modeling paste wasn’t quite up to the task. I figure it’s been about 25 or so years since i’ve touched acrylic to make paintings, and my technique got a lot more about process since then, so it was a bit of messing around to sort out how to make it work.

All page or half-page sized, thin plywood; will fit on my scanner for easy hi-res digitizing (hello online print sales). 13 started. 3 are awesome, a few more are pretty decent, all are at least adequate. I am hoping to sell some to friends, so maybe it’s better that they aren’t all major works, so i don’t feel compelled to jack the prices too high.

It’s a fucking Hail Mary pass, big time. we were lucky to get rent money and insurance quarterly in the boat, including some last minute drama with replacement debit card, but then yay, right back to sowhatchadunfuhme lately, innit?

so, back to scrambling. trying to organize a new chillout mix to maybe get a gig at the place where Bhu almost worked (sigh). pulled about 100+ tracks into Live to cull, which is such overkill. going to edit the last couple of years’ VFX work into a new reel-let and alert the media. and finish up these paintings, scan, set up an online print shop and sit here in my whore shoes waiting for the traffic.

Bhu has her first show in a while coming up in 2 weeks. Had some more drama recently with the ex-guitarist, which again delayed the CD they’ve been wanting to get out since over a year, so…that. A friend of hers made a cute drawing of her for the poster, and came over and we sorted it out, and got prints made. odd primitive process, looks like a big color printer, but inside is a big drum with thick ink on it. Want two colors? make a run, then take the stack over to the other machine. cute in concept, but registration is a joke, so every single poster is misaligned uniquely. pffft.

now to get some tape and go stick em up.

sweet news, one of my very favorite people on the planet is going to be in town this weekend. quite the surprise. few people i know are as impressive as this fine person, and he makes it look so effortless. like, he decided he wanted to be a journalist; a few years later, staff writer for the NY Times. wanted to learn Chinese, so did. Now works in Times office in Beijing. Caught a story that needed to be made into a documentary, fucking well made that happen too. What’s next? Also, rub some of that off on me for chrissakes, my magic lamp seems to be sleeping.

was almost to the party and get a text, “party over soon, can stay home if you want”. well shit. went anyway, got to play a little on a second inside system (cops pushed open air out of the open), then wrap it up. This is why when Bhu asked me “so are you getting psyched for your set?” I said I try not to even think about it until i see what it’s going to be. have been discouraged way too many times for that.

my friend helped me figure out why my sound is always so dirty. much of the time when i play, there’s no clarity, it just sounds distorted. go home, render it out, sounds fine. weird. apparently, even though the software is in like version 8, with over a decade of feedback from geeks, they still haven’t sorted out the sound engine, and it’s really easy to push it too hard, with the margins being very short and fickle. well what, the fuck.

an old friend from the US has asked me to do a little music video for a track of his. waiting to hear what the budget will be; would love 2K, would be jammed to get 500, we shall see. he wants it nice and trippy; why thank you for asking!

update: 250. I’ll take it, i can make something for that, hopefully mostly re-purposing some existing projects some. on with it.

oh look, a nice bit of expermination i did once…

second meeting with Bhu’s band went ok. skillful mediation to the rescue; don’t remember where I learned how to do this but it seems my mojo was up to the task. so, onward. Tickets are booked for a big show they’re doing in Geneva Switzerland early March, including one for me. finest. back to the rehearsal room, get this machine running again. They are expecting a huge audience for the show; they are the headlining act at a festival, and perhaps 2,000 people could be in the audience! hoping they can get some kind of CD together by then to sell. This is not made easier by the fact that we decided Bhu is going to re-take most or all of the vocals, oops. She was nervous and stressed when she did them before, and she can do better, and therefore…what the hell.

I took the dwindles of my last paycheck and bought a few small pieces of plywood and a basic set of acrylic paint. fucking hate acrylics, but in the current situation it’s the only realistic option, unless I want to wait even longer. There’s a technique i want try, easy with acrylics, first you build up a texture, then you work on the values, then you add transparent glazes to finish up with the color. With oils, building up any kind of texture means days or weeks of waiting for it to dry enough, but with acrylics, it’s more like a few hours tops, but probably not even that. then the value layer is dry in minutes, and yeah. Also, can cover it all with a matte finish later, without waiting months like you’re supposed to with oils. So, five letter-size pieces and 10 half-that await; this small, i can easily make high res scans. And then maybe finally get on with that online shop action I started ages ago.

did a marathon of DJ set editing on Sunday night into Monday, almost 5 hours of them. still wanna make one more final pass, then will toss them to y’all wolves.

Bhu’s band had some big drama the last few eeks, seemed unresolvable, and she sure wasn’t in the mood to deal with it. I offered to mediate a meeting, and last Wednesday it came together, and after nearly 3 hours, well whaddya know, i pulled it off. It was about putting the past to bed, stage one. Next meeting will be about shaping up the future, hope it goes as well, or shit’s gonna up-shake. shit. Too bad, as she got them a booking for a festival in Geneva Switzerland early March, for an expected crowd of about 2,000…headlining! So, time for a wee bit more magic.

A friend of the guy who throws the parties i am a resident at has been wanting to set up a label. To do that, you need to set up distribution deals and various permits and licenses and jerk this and that, so he said fuck it and just bought an existing label, walla. First up will be a four artist vinyl, one track each, and i am invited. A nice chugging techno thumper is requested; my constellations just got sorted. Cough of the new year almost went away, then came back. Goddammit, just piss off, papa gots work to do!

apparently i have decided to celebrate the end of the year with a raging cough, just great. had a bit of a hack earlier in the week, but I guess after a late night waiting for my DJ slot last night (which ended a half hour in, shitass), the body just bit tight the anchor and dove. At least I’ll get a midnight hug and kiss for the first time in like ages. Supposed to play again at this club we’ve been trying like hell to salvage, but after last night it’s fine with me if I never set foot in there again. so much wasted hope. It’s been great to have the opportunity to develop my dancefloor sets on a semi-proper system, no complaints there, but dammit, it stings to pour your heart into a set for 8 body-sprayed knuckleheads and their chicken-dancing scrawny babes. We gave it a good go, now it is SO time to kiss it goodbye. Already lining up other places; had a good party at the epic dowager of a squat Tacheles, in their little bar; small but super enthusiastic crowd. Three or four more shows lined up there.

new set online, Chromaphage. starts mellow then goes full on, 90 minutes. time to alert the entire goddamn planet, book me bitchez!

anyway, thanks for playing the home version, I’m going to go slip into the slowly warming place between the blankets and wait for midnight. Give your 2012 a nice warm hallo for me.

last fall, started to notice the occasional twinge in my heart, and once in a while an unexplained pain here or there in my left arm, but never saw a doctor about it. last couple of weeks, things have gotten more distinctive, and I finally made an appointment with a cardio specialist. or, at least found when walk-in hours are, lady said bring a book. fingers crossed. a couple of friends say they have “valve issues”, for which there isn’t much of a solution except do enough cardio and avoid stress. Had an on and off freelance job the last couple of weeks, for which caffeine was required to keep from bruising my forehead from repeatedly falling asleep against the monitor. I fucking hate caffeine, and am guessing that’s what triggered it. We shall see.

but the project I was working on (and am still tweaking) is going to be damn lovely, a shot of a girl in an insufficient wee boatlet in big stormy waves. studio did the 3D of the girl and newspaper sack watercraft, bobbling along, and I did everything else. will put it up as soon as I’m allowed.

Buh’s band has four members, three of which are in another band, and the fourth has a small record label and a little bit of cash to play with. Despite his reluctance, they cajoled him into producing an album for them, which he would release, and as predicted, the project went all fuck you, no fuck you, no you shut up, etc., and now there is tension in Bhu’s band. they have been trying to resolve, but it doesn’t really seem to be settling down, so sometime soon everybody, including Bhu, is gonna have a sitdown together, and i am going to mediate. Bhus is stressed, but i am trying to keep her positive.

Will start thinking more soon about doing a project together with Bhu; if we put out an album, my friend will gladly release it. he has gotten the crew 3 days/week access to a decent little audio project studio, so i am going to try and make a lot of time to get my ass up there and work on shit, my own tracks to start but it could go anywhere. For all the security and stability I have had this past most of year, I have been pathetically uncreative. Bahhh.

will teach a one day ~8 hour workshop in After Effects around Feb 3 I think, that’s exciting. then start the proper course in maybe April. will be good to get back into that.

have been waiting forever for a box to be shipped from my sister; first effort was a slovenly clusterfuck of incompetence, but attempt number 2 seems a definite maybe. it’s at customs, let’s see if the sticker notice gets to my door okay. what a joke.

I was sitting at Bhu’s bar the other night, and she said oh you should talk to this guy. Turns he’s from NYC too, and was often at Twilo, the big shrine to all things debauched, especially techno, that I used to frequent. He said were you there the night of the fire? Oh yes, i especially was. Back in 2001, a big DJ was scheduled to play there (Digweed, if you must), and he insisted they have a chillout system/DJ, so the club built a little chainlink booth in the men’s room, with sound in the hallway as well. Pretty cool; everybody pees, so everybody had to be subjected to my devious mischief at least a few times during the ride. A little hard to see more than a foot into the dark beyond the front-lit fencing, but no matter. Good fun. Soat one point, i had a couple few tracks layered together, and it was somehow too creepy even for me; i actually felt this cyliner of greasy nastiness roiling in the far top corner of the room, and decided I better get that shit off and put on something safer, just ewwww, done. whew. Moving right along. Five minutes later a friend stops in and says we’re clearing the club out, there’s a fire in the ceiling on the other side of the far wall. You know, right behind where i was generating the creepy roil. Oopsie! So, yeah, 2,000 rolling ravers out into the February cold. Most of my friends have heard this story,

But here’s the kicker: this guy even had a picture from the street! Behold!!

how damn cool is that!

in other news, I am getting a license to Maya soon; this is a brilliant thing. It is THE hot platform for high-end 3D, and one does not meddle in cracks of it unless one wants very much to have it phone home and tell the police where to send the bill. And it happens, in fact it’s almost guaranteed. So damn excited about this!

starting some woodworking; thinking i will make my desk a standing desk, not sure how that will work. will have a stool with a back on it for some tasks, but will try to be up off my ass as much as possible. At my age, the risk of heart disease increases radically when you let the ass parts go numb.

meeting last week went well, just a tentative budget but if their client bites it will be a lot of work, and included in the budget is enough for me to get a new system, NEED and WANT. When I got home, there was one rush job waiting, and an offer to teach a class next semester, and also a request to meet with that woman about a project. Well my oh scooty my! Rocked out the rush job, client totally jazzed about results, will pay fast, niiiiice. Went to meeting today about other project, will go again next week to see their better-resolved plans and then give estimate, but it should go ahead i think. Damn it’s nice to have paper in my pocket that I earned myself.

Did a fun mix at the party last Friday; was asked to bring in as much acid as possible (ie tracks featuring a TB303, the classic acid sound), and it went great. Und zo, ElfElfElf, 2 hours of bent.

Just bought a thick folder of new tracks, lots of prep work to do tonight, then tomorrow i go rent some time on a big system and go work on a bunch of new mixes: one deep dark techno, full late hour psychedelic rage-on, then a warmup-to-bumpinish mix, then a mix to maybe get a few gigs at bars, bubbly house. Thinking around 5 hours total. I got some work to do tonight getting it organized.

when DJs/producers “make it”, the process can begin and get air rather abruptly. One of the main ways it happens is by someone charting one of your tracks someplace significant, adding it to their top ten for whichever month. Dr. Walker, the promoter I work with, used to be one of the kings of the German techno scene, then went away to Crete and points beyond for several years, and faded off the radar. All of a sudden, his blip is back and beeping loud. He has a track on the new Berghain mix/compilation (someone had to tell him, the label that licensed it never contacted him), and now Resident Advisor has asked him for a new chart. And I’m going to be on it. Righteous! Psychedelic Kitchen is his netlabel, meaning stuff will only be released digitally, at least to begin. Next step is to get the shit mixed down and officially released! Eh, better make some other tracks, I have two but more would be damn fine. I guess he’ll chart jundiev or firkof, both on my site.

Still pushing to finish my two new mixes, one for bar, housey, not so dancey, and the other full on raging dark trippy techno. The bar one seems to be organized and about ready to go; bought a few new strong tracks for the darkfloor, but will probably leave that loosely sorted so i can be spontaneous. Hopefully going to get to mix that one on the actual mainfloor system at the club we do parties at, can’t wait!

Bhu’s remix track seems to be ready to go to mastering; they did a really great job, and hopefully we’ll get to deliver it to the label in person, we both really want to see their faces. I don’t think anyone was expecting it to come out this good. It’s really something, very proud of her!

Bhu’s club’s label (Ostgut Ton) invited her to do a remix of one of the tracks on their label, Steffi’s “Sadness”. Seeing as it basically has about six words sighed over and over, wasn’t much opportunity for her to soar vocally, so she and i worked out about 20 lines of lyrics, and her band came up with a gorgeous simple riff that’s quite moving. It should be released as a 7″ around the end of the year; the other side is a rather comical character that does a stiflingly cliche grind of noisy indu-rawk, with that ridiculous wolfman-teeth raspy growl, haven’t heard what he’s done but let’s just drop that subject right now. Today there was a photo shoot for the two of them, up on the roof of the club, which was previously a huge heat-generating plant. I had heard of the vast room in the back that they are fixing up to be a concert hall. Holy fucking shit, that thing is insane! Concrete hopper chutes in the 100′ ceiling 20′ on a side, ventilation holes just as big, everything 5x bigger than normal. Whuh. Roof was unremarkable but it was still pretty cool to be up on top of my shrine.

She’s got a show coming up next weekend, and she’s a long-standing favored/special child in the club’s family, so we went up to the office at the top of the other building, i was umgawd so verklempt! she passed out a few flyers to the various people there, got to shake the hands of the two bosses, didn’t show it but i was totally gassed. It’s also nice for them to see us together in the daytime, makes her look good; we are ten months together now, and we look great together, very affectionate and playful, and they’ve seen her through plenty of tough times.

Her show is in a great room, wood-panelled with nice acoustics, but so far the guy running the place seems to be a no-show, which is stressing her. Just trying to gently coax her in the direction of promoting it as best she can, and hope her bandmate running the technical-issue side of things can get the shit at least to adequate. We shall see.

Finally got paid from the second job last round, so nice to have cash in pocket. i could easily spend it four times over so it’s not that lasting a change but we’ll see. time to hustle the fuck out of the world of possibilities. i have doc i made of all my contacts in the music world, goes on to about four columns of 10 pt type, so maybe something will splash ashore for my efforts. wanna do CD covers, flyers, etc. Would really like to finally start getting a nice chunk of my income from the dance music world. Still never got paid for the flyers/poster i did in August, and i doubt that fucking worm will ever come up with anything but attitude and self-pity, so it’s up to me to exploit the hell out of it into something lasting.

and the other clock hasn’t moved: it’s still well fucking high time i fall off my thumb and make some tracks already. right now mostly focussing on a couple of mixes, one spacey but positive house/light tech for bar gigs, and the other a deep hard dancefloor mix, have found so many incredible new tracks to fold into a 4D thrall. The promoter I’m working with is really into where I’m going, and seems up for helping me land some gigs. His name carries major weight with anyone who’s been around the scene for long, so the ball is in my hands. Ready set…fucking hell just get on with it.

Friday gig, was hoping for a late set and a full crowd. got the late set. sigh. went on around 8.30am to an almost empty club, played almost a half hour before fade to boohoo. whatever. the new tracks are fucking killer! the good news is when I get my new mix sequenced out a bit, my buddy the promoter is going to arrange for me to go the club and mix on the big system, wayyyy fuck yeah. so, time to arrange. there’s a link to the set on my soundcloud page, haven’t put it up on my site yet. starts a bit bumbly, but the last half is as solid as it gets.

shoutout to awesome friend Patrick, who lost a longtime friend, since childhood, this week to a heart attack. He’s one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet, and must be having a hell of a time with this. Big group hug in his general direction.

put in some time this week on beatport, where i buy all my tracks, or at least used to when i occasionally had disposable income. really dug long and hard, and if you put in the time, eventually it pays off. Sometimes you go through 50 or 100 tracks (or much more) before you find one for the hold bin, and then suddenly you find 5 out of 20 for the cart. Found one amazing new producer, named Quantic Spectroscopy (look him up on soundcloud.com), who is extremely prolific, and alarmingly consistent in quality. Wrote him on soundcloud, and he responded enthusiastically, think i made a new bud. So, anyway, feeling tentatively confident that i have a good bag of stuff now. Hold that thought.

Go to Berghain. Totally floored by Dino Sabatini’s live set, massive. Go upstairs, hear Monika Kruse do a set that is not only massive and all that, but even groovy, too, something even harder to pull off than energy. Then go downstairs and hear Marcel Fengler (my favorite of the Berghain residents) tear up a massive expert set. Goddammit people, I am trying to contrive some valid confidence here, did you have to pick this weekend to raise the damn bar so high yet again? Wankers, thanks a lot.

but back to beatport. at the moment, my severely-culled cart is twice my budget, and i still have a couple of heavy names to check the catalogs of. One way or another, i want to make the cuts, and work out a new mix before end of week. We’ll see. Playing Friday night, like to have a new one in pocket. Good problems, let’s step up.

tried not to get hopes up too much for DJ gig Friday night, and a good thing. attendance was o-kay, but didn’t really reach any kind of critical mass. here and there i got a tiny crowd of howling dancers going in my room, but I couldn’t seem to keep them. the club has a deep repuation as being a bunch of dumbasses from the suburbs, all body spray and proto-gay tight clothes, what are called douchebags in the US, and that stank is hard to shake. i hope my buddy Ingmar, who does all the work of hustling us into existence, will diversify to other clubs, he seems to understand it’s probably needed. but i got to play big and rugged, and recorded the set; will edit it up into something presentable this week. next.

today we are going to Berghain at 4pm (!) for a set by one of my faves. pretty comical to go out to a flea market, walk in the sunshine…then go into a big dark room full of raging bass and dance a few hours. hell why not.

just finished a project for a small studio, working for a pretty huge client. was wayyyy underbudgeted, got paid for 6 days and worked 12, but hopefully it was a good investment; the company is a big composites research group, part of a very large research group, so tons of manufacturers of all flavors will be seeing the video, and the guy did a good job, so…yeah, glad it’s over. Friday I was there 17 hours trying to finish up, then yesterday it was 16. guh, get in the damn box already. tomorrow is the big tradeshow or conference or what the fuck ever, so hopefully it won’t be long before my client’s phone starts ringing with work for us. we shall see.

in the meantime, here’s a little taste of the work, a design for a futuristic lightweight electric car, cute, huh?

went to see the new Planet of the Apes movie tonight, mostly a lot of fun, other than the usual few bubble-poppers (they did so much with facial expressions, but when the apes jumped, sometimes the physics were so off, and this is just inexcusable). A pretty good gee-whizzer to sit near the front for. But watching movies in Germany is a little different. We were laughing and wowing and reacting to the movie, and that was clearly not deemed appropriate by the viewers around us. Fucking drones. And the funniest thing, when the movie is over, nobody budges until the credits are finished. Nobody. Lots to love about living here, lots that is just mind bogglingly stupid.

ok, finished 11 day work run, and then to my surprise was asked back in for today, helping generate things for a pitch for a large large project. That’s how I like to end a job, with the client going so ok, let’s talk about the next job. Yesalright.

was let hang in the real world until 3 today, arrived ehhpppsalittle closer to 3.30, then pushed through a long tutorial of a seriously incredible After Effects plug in, called Plexus. If you go there, check the demos near the bottom. And also the new OBJ Sequence exporter there, for Cinema 4D-to-Plexus 3D animation export, just released. Go, watch the videos.

so, Shambhu’s set at Berghain is up on their soundcloud page; give a look if you somehow haven’t yet. Walking Blues, such an eerie bit of loveliness at the beginning.

going to meet a buddy in a bit, maybe go out of town to DJ this weekend, camp out at some underground party, go big on the techno system. we’ll see. Still waiting to get paid for the flyers, don’t want to have to ask Bhu for any money for it. Hard enough she has to steel herself against her insecurities to let her bf go off miles (eh, km) away to a crowd of lit-up hungry strangers, wouldn’t add insult to that to ask her to fund it. poor thing, no matter what i do, she’s still so afraid of losing me. frustrating for me, very, but her feelings are what they are, not for me to judge. this summer has been all but non-existent as far as gigs, so I gotta jump on what I can. The promoters of the party also do the main afterhours sunday all-day party here, so it’s doubly good to get in with them. we’ll see.

when i see him, he will have just picked up the flyers and posters, man I can’t wait!

am doing a little graphic design job for an acquaintance in exchange for massage and holistic advice. so goddamn frustrating. I spent a fair amount of time and energy trying to get them to sort out their end, and they came back with such lameness, mainly in choosing the image of a dry dandelion head about to blow off into the wind for their front image. What are the first three things you think of? Dry, itchy, end of life. Way to sell it. Whichever, i am done pushing, going to just line it up as they asked for and move on. I swear, sometimes working with a group of women can be such a damn drag, everybody more concerned with constantly checking in on each other’s feelings than actually making an intelligent statement. Durrr.

built a freestanding shelf unit for the bedroom; was a big shelf screwed into the wall, laden with clothes, but it was drifting towards the floor. Nice to actually do something non-digital for a bit.

had an opportunity to make a flyer and poster, decided to just go for it and make something special. 10K flyers going out around into the whoever? and posters around Berlin? Was sure not doing anything better with my time. Totally sucked down my time though, have been all but locked to the computer since Saturday night, mostly waiting for my 3D app to ungag the machine again (yeah, reeeally need to update my hardware), but just shipped them off, and take a look:

went to a free 3D model site, and grabbed a bunch of any shape/model that looked fun: chandeliers, bath tubs, whichever, and just striped and duped em and tossed em into strands. Client wanted black white and red only, so that simplified the coloring. Kind of making a sculpture out of random elements to make a drawing. Me likey. Me sleep now, long time. I guess this was my birthday present to myself, I approve!

And oh, yes, it is in fact at Berghain’s smaller club next door. Yes, my first cool graphic design job here features a Berghain logo. Also likey.

we’ve been worrying for a couple of months about a pending possible eviction proceeding. German law says, late two days twice in a year? papers served. no late fees, just straight to fuck you. We had visited an experienced lawyer who combed over the possibilities and details, and she told us that technically, sure anything could happen, but seriously to not get our hopes up. Bhu always tends to default to the worst possible outcome anyway, so…we’ve been less than positive. I knew the meeting with landlord’s agent was today, but assumed Bhu had ditzed on it (and: true), so didn’t remind her. She was VERY happy when the lawyer called and said it actually went well: we’re staying!! will still be the considerable matter of court fees, which could be, who knows, a grand, but so fucking what, moving would be a hugely massive-r hassle. A year ago, the Berlin real estate market was still fairly wide open, but it’s clamped up tight since. So, YES!

also, just got a wee job to do a flyer for an upcoming party, which will cover my next month’s rent. have been wanting to do graphic design for clubs/labels, and normally it’s work-for-free to get into the market, but this one’s paid, so…fuck yeah.

perhaps our luck is breaking? believe!! hell why not.

man, I hardly ever have anything to say anymore, but things do happen here.

and at that note, Bhu yells out on her sleep on the couch. Wakes up for 2 seconds to say she’s tired and then is asleep again. some bell rang just then?

went to the hardware store yesterday, going back in a minute. am moving main desk into living room, open up kitchen. fiddling with other things too. make a list of everything needed, and then triage, and then go do it. the list part is fun, but the rest is ok too. I am a good influence on this space.

main projects right now are to set up two online shops, one for Tshirts and whatever else they have (except fine art prints), and the other just for prints. trying not to make it too epic of a project, want it done and up asap.

Liquid Sky just signed us up with a new club, sounds loud, looks dark, excited. go see it with Ingmar on Friday. He’s been working hard, and is hoping to do an open air or several this summer, he can make that happen and i hope he does. Good man.

fishing for brilliant schemes to make money, and I realize i still have never made a proper effort for any kind of online shop presence, so am starting with prepping a few drawings, vectorizing them (a super tedious process) so they can be printed at any size. should actually take them a step further and do some digital colorway weirdness, but first things first. then, see what i can do with the power of social media, and friends of friends, etc.

starting with these 4:
drw004, one of my favorites
T2wall, which was one of my best pieces, will be a ton of work but then whams.
drw070
and maybe drw029, just to round things out

now to make several hundred thousand points and handles, and then on to the next part.

lots of places where you pipe in some images, set up pricing/etc., and they do the printing, shipping, billing…and moneying. hell why not, it’s just a question of marketing. at least I’ll have it off the do list.

health insurance is up for renewal. haven’t made a single claim, but it’s going up almost 400€/year anyway. hey unnamed fuckers, you are so not invited to my birthday party. Jesus, rent on my body is about 2/3 what i pay for a room. fffffffuck.

in good news, we are about to run out for a round of frisbee. let’s just focus on that instead.

and a wonderful track from the 80s, by a band Bhu turned me onto, Les Rita Mitsouko, Someone to Love.

got the parts needed to run a line of Ethernet to kitchen, via hole in wall to neighbor’s, but he doesn’t seem to be so available, so Bhu said fuck it, we moved her sewing machine table to the kitchen, and moved the kitchen table to the living room, and i set up the monitor and hard drives and stuff, and am now on the web, on the full system. just on a smallish table (just about room enough leftover for a sheet of paper), but it can work until we are fixed proper. i have been pretty useless the last few days, eagerly running errands and shopping just to stay busy, but other than that a despondent lump. It’s nice to be kept and bestowed with generosity, but it’s also a little hard to loft into when I can’t muster enough productivity in my own life…us guys need our feeling of effectiveness. So, cross that excuse off, i have enough setup to work. To it.

been turning Bhu onto Firefly, such a treat. The other night she had her first pass of Public Enemy’s “Fear of a Black Planet”, which is kind of a bible, so dense with so much creativity, one of those things that seems so complete it’s hard to imagine it was created, just always existed somehow.

not sure what’s up with my tax number, was due end of last week or so. fingers crossed. only money I own is waiting for those digits, none in my hand until.

definitely running it down to the fumes again, but more gas is…just…over…the…horizon. am so ready to get out of this apartment, what a dead in the water two months this has been. pulled my few days of hard hustling down, sent my emails, put in some time working on two tracks that aren’t finished but hey, and…yeah that’s about it. spent a lot of too many hours despondent in bed, but, sleeping is the best way to travel.

was hoping for a job to appear this week, but it’s postponed until mid March, ouch, but it turns out it will be worth at least 2K, way more than the 500 i was expecting. Main client stepped up yet again and will cover my March quarterly insurance, whew, that always looms damn big.

got a small teaching gig next Monday, which will be enough to cover my move to friend’s place just after. a month in the spare room of my best Berlin buddy will be a welcome change from this mire.

last week, spent basically five nights at my friend’s place (she has a very unique name so i’m going to omit it so her bizniss doesn’t turn up in web searches); went down Wed then just didn’t come home. dropped in fast on Saturday to shower and run back out, and came home today. while it’s nice to have a place to go escape, i think it’s clearly a sign of depression; we just loaf. one very nice thing, she’s actually open to my suggestions about this or that; gave her a little chat about basic Feng Shui ideas, about losing stale energy, and voila, several large piles of stuck crap are in the dumpster or stashed, and i glued up and sanded a nice piece of wood to go in her kitchen, a new counter, she digs it.

watched SUCH a trippy movie there, Immortal, by Enki Bilal, one of my favorite artists from Heavy Metal magazine. in places the CG was definitely subpar, but whatever. What a damn trip. Find it.

heard a tough story; a year or so ago, a friend of mine was moving all of his stuff from Crete to Berlin, stopped someplace to shave his head (?), walked off barefoot to do it, came back and truck was gone. Everything, including years of great studio gear, soooo much stuff. Plus, no papers or passport. Totally fucked. Told the police; they simply flagged down passing carts until they found one that would take him out (of Bulgaria), to Bucharest, where he was then stranded for ten days, broke and barefoot, until they sorted out a passport for him. luckily he found someone to take him in, and is doing ok in Berlin, bouncing back hard, but shit…what a fucking major kick in the teeth. Count your blessings, I just did.

of all the places to point the boat, i really have been neglecting the VJ/music video side of things. Not much excuse; when I’m sitting around broke i still have the tools and the free time to making whatever deranged experiments arise. Really, no excuse at all. Shameful in fact; shut up, it really is. Have been pushing more emails into the void, another 50 today, but somewhere i think it’s time to ask about one of those other someday’s i’ve been nudging along in my blind spot. mentioned it to my buddy who is making me a resident at his party, and he said he’s starting up a video studio soon. Oh and also a gallery and likes my stuff. Connections, good to have.

had the best dream the other night, woke up and told my friend wow! what a dream and then popped right back to sleep and then it had this best-ending-ever that really rocked my world. Basically, a bunch of people, maybe 8 or 9, each only knows 2 or 3 others but their stories all gradually intermingle. Each is subtly trying to manipulate the others in their circle to do this or that thing, but they are all mysteriously nudged by dreams and visions, especially in ways to somehow divert the course of the manipulation into unforeseen novel solutions/directions. In the margins of these dreams is a character, never really central, but present in everyone’s stuff. There was also some other vague image/motif of some transcendental mythical type character, like a Jack Frost, and lots of imagery of shoes, maybe oversize ones, but definitely imbued with significance and unrevealed power. The one guy who seems to somehow rise to the head of the group as it congeals, near the end, things go all wrong for him and he gets a bad fever or something, is hospitalized, falls deep into near failure, then emerges with a whole new view, and pulls them altogether to discuss some project, maybe making a film, not sure. This is where I wake up and go wow.

Then i fall right back asleep and see that final shot turn into a painting, pull back, and we are in a big wooden stagecoach thing, flying in howling winter winds, and in one big breath the marginal character guy, in top hat, obviously some Jack Frost demi-god/trickster/weaver, pulls off his shoe, which gets bigger as he does it, and leaves a big expanding web of frost connecting to his foot, and he says, ghost-breathily, portentiously, “WHAT ARE YOU ALL????”

OMG did I wake up cheering so big!!

wtf, how do i get Terry Gilliam to make that damn thing? or hmmm, maybe the new studio needs a 15+ minute vanity project/hallucination to announce itself to the world. Damn straight i wrote this one down…!

fuck i love to dream!!

great show last night. as expected, plenty of thinning-hair adults, but a surprising number of people probably younger than the albums. Not sure how satisfying it is to go out and tour 25 year old records, especially when i doubt many people wanted to buy any CDs from the lead guy’s new project, but damn, that room was seriously full of love for those songs. I sang almost every damn word. sound was a bit on the low side, i have been spoiled by techno soundsystems, sure, but it definitely could have had more meat. guitars were a bit muddy too, but whatever. it was such a treat. made me feel a bit mortal, but also joyous about it, seeing something from half my life ago still beautiful…

if you google chameleons rapidshare you can get all three albums, just saying…sssssh.

decided to drop a little cash on things i think i need, take a little chance. searched for some DVDs i could use to study German, figure i can run them once or twice with the English on and German subtitles struggling along under, then go full Deutsch once i know the dialogue. What a fine idea, except the damn German VO only matches the titles maybe half the time, a lot is left out in the text. Bastards. but i got me the whole first season of Las Vegas for 23€, 16+ hours. I think it’s a good choice, trashy and flashy, and lots of chat, and won’t drag me down in repeated viewings like chewier dramas like Mad Men or Six Feet Under. So, first episode will be run whaddya think, six times or so? at least get to start to hear the sounds, shit goes by so fast I can barely pick out the syllables most of the time. So much of German is the same basic syllables in different combinations, and words in idiomatic orders that mean one thing in this order, and something else in another. So, over and over and over we go. And if you’re lookin for some trashy silly airhead fun, there’s certainly less entertaining stuff out there than Las Vegas. the final season with Tom Selleck as the new casino owner, he had a fun character.

also needed a pair of earbuds for my mini-recorder, so i could listen to German vocabulary looping while i walk or whatever (can’t do a damn thing in German if you don’t know the genders, all this Dative/Accusative shit is built on it)(don’t ask)(seriously)(even the fucking adjectives have to conform to the right gender/case)(BASTARDS), and realized for about 15 more, i could get a whole teensy mp3 player, so snagged that. now i have a weapon against the shit radio they play in the gym, i get these catchy popsongs in my head and they become permanent infections, wake up in the middle of the night with one yammering away. wonder if i can sleep-learn some German with them.

other than that, just typing away merrily on my German notes. and listening to a few podcasts by Major DJs that kind of bore me to tears. And of course they are flooded with compliments about this or that OMGsoooKiller track, what incredible mixing, when there’s little actual mixing at all. Then again, this does give me confidence that i can make tracks good enough to hang, so stuff that jealousy and get to work.

hey, if my diary is boring then you try it.

Sister is finally home from hospital. she sent me images of her xrays. i don’t want to creep anybody out or i’d share them. FUCK. she still has a ton of curvature, i had no idea. bunch of screws around her lower back, then a long rod going up to her neck, only fastened at the top. holy fucking shit. I’ll take my plate of room-temperature problems, thanks.

as in, I keep going to bed at like 5am. midnight rolls around and i wake up, and just keep rolling, and then that annoying time compression thing takes over and boom, future. and then, the next day’s light hours are already spent. 1.20am here, not the slightest bit tired, going to go curl up in bed with a German book and hope for crushing boredom soon.

re-organized the staging table to the left of my desk, moved a cube to the near side, filled it with books, and put a shelf on top, loaded that up with all my German books, so now they are very nearby. it’s a start. organized my audio do-list, cleared all the clutter off my desk and made dense do-lists of imminent needs. still raging at the overwhelm of too damn much in my face, but my OCD alibis are nearly done. plus, until my next check comes, i am down to what’s in stock. loaded up a bit on groceries tonight, and thus have 20€ left to blow at Berghain on Saturday, their 6th anniversary (huh, thought the fifth was a month or so ago…must be that was just their record label, or…?), and then I am adrift on fumes. woo hoo! large check expected in, maybe, a week. or you know, like, whenever. cha. they should just fucking name this shit after me.

the other night I listened to two friends chat away in German. i think i recognized about 3/4 of the words, if I really tried, but that was all the computing power i had, nothing much left for actual comprehension. plus that missing 1/4 was a bit critical. But it’s progress. Also just watched the video i made of Nicole, which I’ve never understood a word of, and i think i was able to get maybe half-ish. soooo nice to understand her in her native language, but also of course heart-wrenching. grrrr.

watched an interesting movie yesterday, The Good German. annoying wandering plot, but ostensibly took place in immediately postwar Berlin, shot to match the film stock of a lot of archival footage. Streets piled with fallen bricks and rubble, endless blocks of skullfucked buildings, and dark creaking interiors, tattered and crumply. Quite a slice of history. Also, Cate Blanchett, who i have just never gotten the appeal of, was pretty stunning as a beatdown beauty, like Charlotte Rampling (see her in “The Verdict” someday), stirred with a splash of Garbo. with subtitles, most of the sentences actually made sense to me. Kind of.

seeing as the snow is again on the ground, including a fresh new blanket today, it is time to stfu about making tracks and actually begin. yes, i know.

woke up from a nap today with a line in my head, went over and sat down and sketched it right out. not necessarily a direction i’m interested in going, but hey, i think it’s plenny groovy.

more importantly: it has hereby begun!

Motorboat_wk1

the Dharma Project is the blog of my very charming friend Jenny Mullins, who was one of the students in my motion graphics class at MICA in Baltimore. She got a Fulbright to go study in India, and her blog is a nice slice of that.

She was one of my favorite students, and I’m glad we’re still friends. She has a sort of girl next door charm, and a wonderful smile, and i was quite pleasantly surprised when for her project she wanted to animate drawing she did of a pile of sloths fucking, with flies spiraling above. Good people ; ) It was amusing to use the desired humping thrusting motion to explain motion curves: k it needs to have a nice rising spike, and then the withdrawal is slower, so the keyframes will be further apart. Good luck in India, Jenny!

off to Berghain, went for a bit last night to check out my bodybuilder lover friend; she took us into a locked part of the club so we could frisk each other, that was special. goddamn i do love kissing. And, you know, other stuff. Had to wait so long for her to get free, though, was so trashed by then, just about falling down drunk. No Jagers tonight, those fuckers always push me into stupidland.

wearing the box from my new Ableton Suite on my head, didn’t even hesitate. It’s a little snug, guess it wasn’t part of the intended function, but then again I have a huge head. FUCK YEAH!! now to install a fuckton of things, and get started on that manual. Highlighters, ready!!

Here, click on this. Pass that around, how glorious.

sent a semi-pissy email to the manager where I DJ sometimes, and wasn’t sure if he’d tell me to fuck off, or if it would get his attention. Latter: he paid me ok for Friday, and gave me two slots for Sept and two more for October, which is one or two less than i had hoped for but at this point i am kind of over caring. I’d generally rather be playing than not, even if most people there don’t seem to give a shit. Free beer, free time to experiment with combinations of tracks.

will go to Berghain twice this weekend; my favorite DJ, Surgeon, is there for a rare appearance Friday, first I’ve seen him there, should be thrilling. Saturday I DJ, then go back again for a friend playing, one of the Berlin originals, should be fine.

looks like I might barely squeak past the August money dregs; am pretty broke right now but my clients are, hopefully, going to catch me before the edge. These quarterly insurance payments are rather the kidney stone, but I guess one big jump is better than a monthly crisis.

other than that, fuck, I got nothin. one foot in front of the other. local gym has a 20€ for 8 weeks special, so when the money lands I might go look in the mirror and see what happens. Several of my relatives are tanks, would be fun to buff up a bit.

oh wait, my set from Poland last week is up, turn that shit the fuck up LOUD. Hardly my most ambitious or original ever, but the crowd sure did enjoy it.

one small project led to another and another, and the day actually has something to show for itself. will post a movie once i get it compressed, but i made a long loop that looks like a thicker gooier version of one of my paintings. found another studio yesterday that does digital printing to canvas, and it was cheap and looks so great. why not. I do love my oil paint, but if there’s a way to bring the threshold down so tons of people can take them home, then that is just so fine. and a cool idea for an edition is to do like a 36 frame loop, and let people pick out any frame they like to print. plus they make good bases for taking further, go into the geometry by hand and make finer details.

out of town DJing the next two weekends, so tonight is coming up on the last Berlin summer Saturday of this year. what a lackluster summer for me so far, really pitiful. but here’s hoping for a smooth Monday at visa central, and two great sets the next two weekends…

just got word that the web educational show that i do all the animation for, LabTV, was recently tested a lot in schools, and everybody, teachers, kids, and check-signers, all really love my animation and graphics. Also the check signers say the quality of same just keeps steadily increasing. That makes me warm and fuzzy. The couple I work with has been so good to me, but even so, it’s often a struggle to balance quality with a limited budget. If I think it needs that something extra, I go ahead and do it anyway, and if it’s excessive, i ask for extra money after the fact, which I know comes out of their pocket but hey. The one episode I really went overboard on, Power Harvesting, with one big long 3D section that took forever to render here, got the biggest props. I done good.

and they said it’s gotten some good media too, gonna search out some of that and see if I can print up some copies for the visa folks, anything somebody other than me says is spiffy.

recent episodes have been getting 150,000+ hits. fun to think that many kids are seeing my work.

spent some time today editing the first half of my first visit to Chemnitz. It’s hardly the most polished ever, but it sure sounded good at the time. Give it a turn, and loud is your friend.

Live at Ndorphin, April 10, 2010: Part 1

walking out the house after, phone rings, it’s the accountant I emailed today, we talked about my stuff. apparently it’s not even necessary for visa action that i file German taxes, all i have to do is show him i made enough money last year, he’ll go over my info, and then write a letter to the visa office and sign it, and he says that’s generally enough. I’ll still have to file by the end of the year, but it’s not in the deadline bag for this round. And also, he’ll only charge me 50 for that letter, and sounded like he’d even just let it slide as long as bring him my other biz! Money in my pocket!!

my sister isn’t having any luck finding the folders with my receipts for 09 and 08 though. got half an idea that i should start watching for cheap fares, and try and duck in for a few days and look myself. hell, for what i’d save in postage, I could fill two big duffels and that would be half the airfare right there. could happen. Anybody want to meet for dranks at the steakhouse in Chesterfield Va? Yeah me neither but I don’t know where else to go.

so anyway, that put me in a major expansive mood, and I just went on a very random walk south, smiling like a happy dog. spend it while you got it. thought I would maybe check out this scifi bookstore fuckall downtown from here, but didn’t rush. and timed it perfectly, just as i get 15 feet from the door they’re locking up. meh.

so, go across the street to the corner place i used to go to when i had the first apartment here, and had a nice chat with the lovely I used to crush a-terrrble on, and she might come out to the lounge tomorrow night to check me out. she really wants to go back to Australia (she’s a Berlin native), but is struggling for money and stuff, and tomorrow i am gonna see if i can find her a feng shui frog, the little bit of brass on which i gladly blame most of my luck for pulling off this big chapter. He’s generally delivered for me so far, believe it or don’t. Hope it lights her up, and moreso, i hope it works for her. special people are rare, and I like when we get what we want.

tomorrow, print out all my bank statements, and try to collate them with my past income, and sort out some stuff. accountant goes on vacation on the 25th and if we aren’t done by then, we won’t be.

is one of the more annoying things an abstract painter can hear

but these guys just ran with it. starts slow, then has a blast.

and the studio that made that animation is in Germany, though in Stuttgart, not Berlin. gonna give them a hello.

i once promised myself i would become a VJ someday. saw a new friend spinning pixels the other week, and i realized, 10 frame pieces are totally usable, lots of fast edit stuff needs little more. oh to achieve a goal of making two of those a day…hell two a week would be better than I’m doing now. she’s going to teach me the VJ software she uses, Modul8, which I actually own, and I’m gonna teach her some After Effects. and one of these days i will take my laptop for a walk to the other side of the table and jock some video.

fingers crossed, there’s a quad-core mac for sale here on craigslist, which i almost have enough to buy. if my client will advance me something, which is likely, I will be SO in, man i need an upgrade. My cute little white macbook is faster than my old G5, but still, four or so times faster would sure be cool also as well. Plus, I really don’t like taking my only computer out into smoky wet drunk places.

if you haven’t listened to Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” lately, well, one of these days. It used to be my kind of homeopathic remedy for angst (ie exaggerate the symptom), just go in, get black, make a nice cyst of harsh cloudy, and then purge it all, hey, sunny day. I’m not going through it tonight, but i am teasing through it looking for samples for tomorrow, and it’s a little stunning how much genius there is in it. Boggles my mind that humans can wrestle such things out of the void, tru-ly epic.

“how can you have aeny puddeng if you daun’t eat yaer meeaat?!”

had three big jobs breathing down my neck, but all of them say enjoy your weekend, we’ll talk on Monday. off to Chemnitz tomorrow, to meet a ride to the party, in a little burg called Rochlitz, which on the map looks smaller than some shopping malls i’ve been to; here’s hoping all the kids come down from the hills for a good raging night. I play 3-4.30, which is such a sweet slot, everybody will be well ready for a good bangout. Would be nice to spend a little time on Sunday cruising out in the country somewhere, but I’ll probably just end up back on the train.

Hoping to get a trip up to a beach area called Ostsee, everyone seems to pick it as their favorite place to get away. I’m just slightly ahead on cash at the moment, and could easily piss it all away, but I really need a recharge. man do i ever.

met a woman a couple weeks ago, had a few drinks with her last night. she has a BF, so that’s off the table, but she’s great. she’s been DJing for ages, and knows a lot of the DJ world pretty well. I didn’t angle for connections, but her head seemed to keep clicking on things i could do to move my career along, so that is most welcome. We are talking about collaborating on a few tracks together, which i would really dig. Told her she can have the money, I just want to get some bookings and nudge this damn thing off the blocks already. She has a great laugh, mouth wide open, uninhibited, and a mischievous glint in her eye. Good people.

Still waiting on the big check from my other US client. It was promised to her many weeks ago, but the foundation is shuffling her around. She has contracts, they said they’d give it up, so hopefully they don’t try to dodge. Was kind of counting on it. Was also thinking of going to see her in France end of month/early June, would be a nice break, but that’s up in the air, she might not even get to go. She was hoping for a biggish inheritance from her prick dad, but it looks like he’ll be spending that on care for his miserable life, which might not be ending as soon as we’d hoped. She is a very warm and generous person, so kind, works hard and takes care of people around her, but the universe keeps playing with her, like a cat and yarn. That shit gets so old. CEO of BP ought to be roasting over burning blobs of oil, but he’s probably up to his neck in hookers. Meanwhile, good decent people have to cling hard to faint hope that their whole world won’t be swept away like so much dust.

And again I ask, who the fuck writes this shit.

People, send some golden light to Monique, half hour north of Baltimore, over by the reservoir, look for the horses. Maybe out in the nice garden she made.

new mix up, Bubbledune, hastily tossed together to court this lounge i want to spin at, mellow bubbly house, nice and breezy, 45 minutes.