How Can I convince you

When I was a lot younger, whenever I was crushing on a girl, I would pray to God that they would like me. “God,” I would say, “Please help so-and-so to like me.” I knew what I wanted. I wanted God to help my little 12 year old heart to find fulfillment, affirmation, love.

I learned eventually that these girls that I liked did like me back. So have I outgrown this tendency to pray for love? Definitely not. My track record was a lot better when I was 12. And even if it wasn’t, there’s still that chance. What if she doesn’t feel the same way? Or more specifically, what if she’s completely over it?

My Mind's Not Right

Sometimes(always) I think there's not really much difference between my generation and generation X. Except maybe skinny jeans. Wait, we stole those from the 80's. Never mind, nothing's changed.

Seriously, though. One difference between us and them could be maybe that they had more money? They were the kids who grew up in the 80's, rejected their parents' values and spent their 20's in the 90's feeling disenfranchised and depressed in their high paying software jobs. Maybe. Maybe not.

The only real difference that I can see is that today we have 1.5 million more means of expressing our angst and quarter-life screams of "what am i doing?" Through twitter, youtube, tumblr, and the like we can record our angst in music, publish our angst in blogs and make youtube videos of ourselves in our rooms talking about our angst(or about britney spears). The kids of the 80's and 90's didn't have that outlet. But thing is, we're still just as anxious-even with the outlets. Maybe because of the outlets. We now have an audience who sees us in our skinny jeans, wearing our Toms shoes and wonders if we got them from Urban Outfitters or what. And we love to interact with that audience. Every 20 minutes they know what we're thinking about whatever. We like it that way.

From St. Peter with Love

If I lived in St. Petersburg, I'd live in Dostoevsky's old district. By the old haymarket where Raskolnikov killed the greedy old woman then spent 500 pages thinking and feeling sad about it. It's a semi-quiet section now, just several blocks from a bustling market of goods where John thought we'd certainly be robbed. We weren't.

I'd get extremely skinny because I'd walk everywhere. And since it's Russia and since I'm walking, I'd only take the money I absolutely needed to make it through the particular day. No wallet. No passport. Just the definite minimum needed to minimize the damage should I be robbed. And I'm certain I'd be robbed at some point.

The problem then, with this plan, is that at some point I'd be asked by a nice man in uniform to show him my passport and incredibly hard to get Visa and registration-which I of course will not have on me. I'd then be kindly escorted to a Russian prison.

Happy New Year and welcome to the poverty line

Got pretty much all my W2's for the past year today. My first year out of college.

I don't really have a problem with borrowing money from my parents. I work in the TV/FILM/MUSIC industry, so whatever pride I had before I started working is now almost completely gone.

In other news, and on the bright side I guess, this past year I got to work on some pretty cool shiz with some pretty cool people/bands.

In no particular order, some of the highlights:

PBS doc


Hope for Agoldensummer - 4th Night from jason miller on Vimeo.




Woodlands: College Living from jason miller on Vimeo.

Hope for Agoldensummer - Katelina, Dear
Uploaded by eikonproductions

Be sure to check our side project out at athenssoundies.com
We love them, and hope to be able to shoot them for as long as we want.

More work from us on our temporary Eikon site.

skate - shot on red - 120 fps from opus magnum prod. on Vimeo.

Not a huge skater. I don't skate at all, but this was shot with the Red camera. Shot at 120 frames per second. Just as a comparison, in case you didn't know, film runs at 24 frames per second. Incredibly beautiful.

Second, the song just makes me weep. It's a song by a guy from Iceland who calls himself Bang Gang.

COMFORT SWEETS(fictional)

There was something about Dad's eyes when he picked up his Martin and strummed along to James Taylor with 30 other middle aged men he'd never met before in his life. It was something strong and uncommon and somehow made us feel like we were a second best option for a man who longed only and always to pick Van Morrison, Jimmy Buffet, and Led Zeppelin before his family. Was his engineering job a false front for a man devoted to songwriting, or was it truly, as he put it, only a hobby? I think mom knew. But she wasn't telling. And she certainly wasn't frowning too heavily as she sat with all the other wives in the corner of the Hotel lobby, talking about whatever and whoever and whatnot. Did they think about whether their men would have still chosen to marry them if touring with label support were a real option? If deciding between a five album contract and a highschool sweet heart, what would any man choose?

Is it man's lot to despise his bread and butter? As these disgruntled government workers, tradesmen, and store owners entered heaven for each other for half an hour, did they yearn too strongly for the chance to hold their Martins for a living? And if so, did they not consider the chance that someone with the lifestyle they coveted, a man or woman supported solely from their art, would seem twice as old and dream themselves about some sort of steadier income? Something to provide food for their little Emily. And would the lucky professional musicians sit back and think decades later and wish maybe they had been a little less self-serving?

-Martin Guitar Club Convention-Nazareth, PA 2008

SOUNDIES

After much clawing and gnashing of teeth, the site is up.

http://www.athenssoundies.com

Designed wonderfully by the crazy talented Andrew Parker(whose thoughts can be found under "Andrew" in my blog links). Maintained and developed by the guys at Boxkite Media

Also, if you have money that you want to invest in a feature documentary about the music industry, then check this out.

http://www.fighttest.com/Business_Plan.pdf

other news in my life:

the cubs are done. we're trying to schedule a last show for a later weekend in august. more on that later.

i'm dating a pretty girl named lauren. she's really great.

i'm looking for a part time job to supplement for the times i'm not shooting commercials with my business associate/producing partner, Jason Miller. EIKONIC Check it out. He has a great eye.

i'm moving into a new place, leaving the graveyard house behind forever. it's best days were definitely in 2007 and it started declining after that, but it's been a great place and i'm sad.