unapologetic2.0

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:52:00 +0000

went to the tom waits show in mobile last night.
it was perfect, odd, sublime, cantankerous and benevolent.

the man is an orchestra. he got a standing ovation for just walking onto the stage (but really, it was for being there for us all, those times when we needed something strange and beautiful.)

saw henry rollins last week at tipitina's as well. he was by turns moving, hilarious, inspiring and infuriating - but always, of course, opinionated, energetic and entirely intense. didn't let up, even once, for three hours.

i like my pop culture heroes. i think i'll keep them. :)

"I work in the gap between art and life." - r.r.

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Wed, 14 May 2008 19:44:00 +0000

r.i.p. robert rauschenberg

few artist's works have influenced the way i think of art, the way i think of design... maybe even the way i think in general - as much as rauschenberg's. wherever my mind can see the beauty and pattern and composition of art in the chaotic and the ordinary, in the mass-media flotsam and jetsam of everyday life, i have (along with christenberry and cornell) rauschenberg to thank.

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 23:11:00 +0000

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/samgrahamfelsen/gGBbrc

i don't know what to say, i've never heard a political speech so unflinching. i don't know if this will sink Obama's ship or save it, but i think that if his candidacy for president ends here, today, he will have secured himself a place in American history for speaking truth to power, for describing the social situation in the US with regard to racial issues as it really is, in frightening clarity, and addressing the elephants in the room directly.

hello there, mr. elephant, you've been here a while, haven't you? we're going to have to ask you to leave. thanks.

wow.

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 03:20:00 +0000

of all the good, bad, fucked up, wonderful, bizarrely strange and utterly pedestrian things to happen in the world and to me of late, none have drawn me to my keyboard to tell you about them...

until today. what stirred me from my torpor this evening was finding out about the impending demise of No Depression magazine, a publication that I can credit with fostering and expanding my love not only of alt.country music (whatever that is) but of music in general, turning me on to so many of my favorite artists and truly educating me about the history and culture of music in this country. While I've always been one to embrace the ascendancy of digital culture, downloadable music, music review websites and mp3blogs, it pains me to see my favorite independent ink and pulp pubs becoming less and less viable. The loss of intelligent, thoughtful and caring voices like No Depression and the late Punk Planet are a bitter downside to all the wonderful things that this series of tubes does for us.

Cheers, ND, and thanks for the words and the music.

Let's all improve our paper collections and make it a mission to keep McSweeney's , The Believer, Giant Robot, High Fructose, Juxtapoz and whatever other independent magazines are still out there making paper interesting alive, shall we?

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 12:36:00 +0000

i had a mardi gras. see?

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 06:52:00 +0000

happens every couple of years. i walk home from the quarter. it's a choice: streetcars only run once an hour that late, and I don't like taking cabs. it's not that bad of a walk, actually - nice straight shot down St. Charles, relatively safe, and it only takes about 45 minutes or an hour or so. If only it had been a little warmer tonight...

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 02:07:00 +0000

holy hell. penn gillette is someone i greatly admire for his...

okay, let me start over, since blogger apparently ate most of my last post. I like Penn Gillette because he has always seemed to me to be an authentic person, for a celebrity - unvarnished, lacking in artifice. you get the feeling that he's probably very much the same in person as he is on camera - larger than life, intelligent, cynical, opinionated and unafraid to state and support what he thinks.

Which is why I was tickled to find that he's started something like a videoblog, called "Penn Says". Despite being sponsored (rather brazenly) by Sony, it seems pretty rough - unscripted and unedited - and pretty entertaining so far.

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 11:03:00 +0000

i'm not much for the metaphysical, but sometimes things happen that make you wonder how exactly everything is connected, deep down, in the undercurrents. sometimes intuition takes you a little farther than you expect; or maybe not, maybe it's just an illusion, a trick of the light, the imagination of order in chaos. your mind fucking with you.

ever know that a letter is in your mailbox before you get there? go to the mailbox just to see if you're right? ever know who it's from and what it says before you open it? of course you have - that's not ESP - you were expecting it, on one level or another, consciously or otherwise. but how did you know it was there now, today?

who gets letters anymore anyway?

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 16:19:00 +0000

i can't stop listening to the sound of streetcars running down saint charles avenue in front of my building this morning. after two long years of silence, the streetcars are back this week, with that familiar ringing rumble, building and fading as they pass. for the first time since the storm it sounds like home.

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 05:55:00 +0000

never changes. it just doesn't.

INFP - The "Dreamer"

INFPs are introspective, private, creative and highly idealistic individuals that have a constant desire to be on a meaningful path. They are driven by their values and seek peace. Empathetic and compassionate, they want to help others and humanity as a whole. INFPs are imaginative, artistic and often have a talent for language and writing. They can also be described as easygoing, selfless, guarded, adaptable, patient and loyal.

I've always been kind of proud of that, but for some reason, today it seems much less like a ringing endorsement and more like a positive spin on a searing indictment of character. it might as well say this:

INFPs are damaged, anti-social, self-deceiving and highly emotional individuals that have a constant desire to resist change and avoid reality. They are driven by impossible hopes and seek to avoid conflict. Oversensitive and emotional, they form unhealthy attachments and fall in love too easily. INFPs are unrealistic, cluttered, and often have a talent for lateness and overspending. They can also be described as disorganized, careless, defensive, indecisive, slow and co-dependent.

blah.

the start... is the hardest part.

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 16:18:00 +0000

Last night i saw the Lucksmiths play at the Hi-ho, with about 8 other people. they're an australian band who play warm, subdued indie-pop with some of the most literate, intelligent, story-telling songwriting i know. Why and how they ended up playing New Orleans on this tour, and why at the Hi-Ho, I have no idea. But it was wonderful, beautiful music, and though there was hardly anyone there, we were all clearly fans - so they played an amazing show anyway. The newly remodled hi-ho has high ceilings and good acoustics, so it even sounded great. Maybe it was the music, maybe it was all that PBR - but i got the distinct feeling of being in exactly the right place at exactly the right moment - something that hasn't happened for me in a while.

----------------
Now playing: The Lucksmiths - A Hiccup In Your Happiness
via FoxyTunes

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:35:00 +0000

harry lee is dead. for some reason that fact seems to have greater cosmic significance than it ought. i just pre-ordered my digital download of the new radiohead album, in rainbows, for the entirely arbitrary price of £2.50, just to say i did - though i have no idea who i'd say such a thing to that would care, honestly. Spent the weekend working on a rollerderby rules test, which, at merciful fucking last, is now finished. Work is in a lull at the moment - painfully slow. The IT guys randomly gave me a new flat-screen monitor for my mac today, which i suppose may qualify as the best thing to happen to me in weeks. Saw Mono and High on Fire on Saturday at One Eyed Jack's, an odd pairing but both intense shows and really welcome in the void of music NOLA has been this year.

life is all in tints and shades of a dark blue-gray lately; can't take thinking alone or quiet or still - on a constant search for distracting stimuli - people, books, music. sleeping less, and less well, than usual. generally feel like hell.

nothing else i feel like discussing, you can go away now.

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 14:56:00 +0000

fuck, this hurts. i forgot how much this hurts.

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 15:57:00 +0000

love me some (New Orleans) Bingo (Show). how can't ya?

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 15:06:00 +0000

weirdest thing. the fluorescent light right above my desk just went out, and as it did, it flickered and hissed. the flickering i would expect, but the hissing was a surprise - it sounded like all the air leaving a tire. You'd think, with all the fluorescent lights around, I'd have heard one do that before, but no, never. and it makes me wonder what kinds of noble gases I'm breathing at the moment.

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 21:48:00 +0000

yes, i want an iphone. no, i'm not getting one. such is life.

...shortly, my ass.

noreply@blogger.com (Allen) — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 20:23:00 +0000

but return, it has. consider this a soft opening... a single toe, testing the water, just barely breaking the surface...

i don't really want to get into the whys and wherefores of what became an almost nine month hiatus; let's just say the blog stopped working rather serendipitously and i deliberately neglected to fix it, because, for various reasons, i just didn't want it there at the time.

but then i wanted it back. slowly at first, a little at a time, and then more and more, the old urge to write has crept back into me until it's become undeniable. i tried to put it off until i had a design ready to go, but that, too, just became an excuse: so here i am, words alone. i think this is enough for now.

i don't really want to do an exhaustive recap of the intervening period, though a lot has happened in that time. I'm in a great relationship with an amazing woman who I've admired for years. I'm the head referee for the Big Easy Rollergirls. I'm still working for a great company, doing in-house design work. New Orleans is still in tragic condition, still decimated physically and spiritually. i am less than a month from my thirty-second birthday. life goes on.

i don't know what the future holds for unapologetic; i don't know if it will be similar or different in form or content from what it has been in the past - i have all sorts of thoughts and ideas, and which ones will win out in the end remains to be seen. all i know is that i have needed to be back here for a while now, and now, however slightly... i am.