Baltimore – My Name Is Reb

Arcade Fire’s “The Wilderness Downtown” video

People have been going apeshit this week about Arcade Fire’s newest video for “The Wilderness Downtown” – a beautiful marriage of HTML5, Google Street, View, interactivity, and a band that unfortunately everyone knows about now. If you haven’t tried it yet, you are asked to enter the address of the home where you grew up and what follows afterward is a beautiful montage of previously filmed videos with new windows opening showing satellite views of your house, and birds. Each window that magically appears with the timing of the song makes your brain explode a little bit more. My favorite part was when you are asked to “draw or write” a note to your younger self, and then birds fly in and land on the letters. Chrome Experiments breaks it down more technically than I can.

Artwalk

I discovered Artwalk.TV when I was looking through TechiesGiveBack’s Twitter Stream. Evidently once a month, using the hashtag #artwalk, people come together and have a Twitter Chat about art uploaded to Artwalk.TV, a community site where you uploaded your artwork, create a profile, and reach out to other artists. Patrons can make a donation in order to ensure that Artwalk.TV can “expand the human creative awareness of what art is and can be.” The next chat is on September 28th and I wholeheartedly intend to join in. Follow them on twitter @artwalktv

Hands and Knees
\”Dancing On Your Tears\”

This is exactly why I like Hype Machine – discovering new bands. Hands and Knees reminds me of my friends’ bands in high school who played shows in their parents’ houses and everyone dances in the kitchen. They kinda remind me of Voxtrot (???) with their Bostonian self-proclaimed “unfussiness”. It is the kind of music you imagine dancing to very wholesomely with your boyfriend during a friend’s party. Two of my favorites are “Dancing On Your Tears” and “The Moonlight is Wicked”. Check out the rest of their albums and “keep whistling like a foolish old man.”

BTW – Dear members of Hand and Knees – it’s very awkward to Google your name to find images of your band and you end up with porn – and you are sitting next to a stranger on the Bolt Bus.

Bolt Bus

How come no one ever told me how AWESOME Bolt Bus is? I bought tickets to visit my sister Deborah in Baltimore for Labor Day weekend and the WiFi along is AMAZING!!! Bolt Bus is perfect to take when you are leaving somewhere for the weekend: you have the ride to answer emails and such so you can actually enjoy your weekend.

insomnia is lame.
apologies for the lack of entries the past few weeks – very lame on my part.
the end of the semester kind of spiraled out of control, what with finals and wrapping up last minute meetings to plan next semester. I’ll only have a few weeks and the craziness will enfold again (sigh).

I’ve been home in my sleepy small town and comfortably content for roughly 30 hours. I left behind in NY my cell phone, an unpaid parking ticket, and the strenuous but exciting life I’ve gotten used to for the past few years.

I was in the room that has been mine since I was born just now and was laying there (what else) thinking. I thought “for over the past 20 years, no matter how much I think I have evolved to be the person I think want to become, I always end up coming back here – and I’m twelve again listening to music and reading late in the night. I’m still imagining the story some stranger might have that is different from my own.”

Maybe it’s because I never officially moved before (save going to college), but now I feel in limbo of not quite having a place to call my own. My room at home isn’t mine – the closet is empty and the library incomplete. The jail cell of a dorm room on LI will never be fully mine – the walls are eggshell and the floors tiled and there is nowhere near the amount of space my turntable deserves. The place I truly want to call mine IS visible on a daily basis – the view of the NY skyline from my window.

I’m in layover. But normally I don’t mind a delayed flight.

This weekend I’m going to Baltimore to act as maid and jester for my sister who broke her foot.

It doesn’t feel like Christmas – despite the fact my family actually has our decorations up a week beforehand.

Everyone is doing end of the year “Top Albums List”s for 2008. I’m giving my list of sixteen random albums which came out this year and had some sort of impact. All I recommend for your listening pleasure:

In no order

Born Ruffians – Red, Yellow, and Blue
Foals – Antidotes
Girl Talk – Feed the Animals
Hot Chip – Made In the Dark
Thao – We Brave Bee Stings and All