The Beaten Sea: Hard Way

The Beaten Sea is a Dallas based folk band that we have had the privilege of seeing on multiple occasions.  If you like them their CD is available here: http://purchase.thebeatensea.com/

Josh Ritter - The Curse

A music video of one of my favorite Josh Ritter songs:

Merry Christmas 2010

I am nowhere near grateful enough for all my friends and family.  Thank you all for the compassion, sacrifices, laughter, wisdom, and joy that you have brought into my life this past year.  I hope everyone has a great Christmas.

And some lyrics from Sufjan’s ‘Sister Winter’:

Oh my friends I've
Begun to worry right
Where I should be grateful
I should be satisfied

Oh my heart I
Would clap and dance in place
With my friends I have so
Much pleasure to embrace

Now my heart is
Returned to sister winter
Now my heart is
As cold as ice

All my friends, I've
Returned to sister winter
All my friends, I
Apologise, apologise

And my friends, I've
Returned to wish you all the best
And my friends, I've
Returned to wish you a happy Christmas

OK Go and their awesome music videos

While their music is pretty good the real brilliance in the band OK GO is in their elaborate music videos.  I know they have been passed around the internet about a billion times but having them all in one place is handy.

A stop motion video made with toast and a laser cutter.

 

An elaborate Rube Goldberg machine.



Lots of Dogs

IF - Early

My IF this week requires a little explanation. It is based on a Doug Burr song about a Chief of police informing a young mother that her child tested positive for a gene only found in killers. The song throws a lot of questions out on the table centered around genetic moral determinism. It is actually a pretty sad but thankfully with the rest of the album, specifically “You’ve Been a Suspect All Your Life”, Burr ultimately refutes this genetic determinism as a diagnosis that is way too early in coming.

Go here to hear the song and read the lyrics.

Animated Video 4

Steven Delopoulos’ music video for Ruin of the Beast.
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-lD9m_YEXU

Animated Video 3

A beautiful claymation music video by Fleet Foxes.
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrQRS40OKNE

Randomness in the last throes of January

I have started preliminary work on my storybook house and so far so good. Saturday is the big day though; it is when it will finally go up.

I have also been playing with legos. Here is a cathedral I made (Tuscan renaissance style).

Also, Laura has the first half of her Literature comps today. A little prayer would be appreciated.

And finally I decided to play a game my friend Matt came up with and Brian and Josh carried on. I put my Ipod on random and listed out the first lines of the first twenty-two* songs. You get to guess the songs (aren’t you feeling privileged to grow up in such a world where you get to play stupid internet games). Oh, no cheating by using search engines.


1. It's a muggy night in Houston And all the intersections are like full service stations
2. It's been one week since you looked at me, Cocked your head to the side and said "I'm angry"
3. A promise or a dare I would jump if I knew you’d catch me
4. The grass is screaming long, midnight cars roll past
5. There’s a place where I come from, It’s the place I belong
6. I wish you would step back From that ledge my friend

7. When I step into the light my arms open wide, When I step into the light my eyes searching wild
8. Said the plain clothes cop to the beauty queen “I’ve seen nothing but a spoke in a wheel”
9. Love was a promise made of smoke in a frozen copse of trees
10. Go away, Close the light, Shine tomorrow, Sister hold me
11. I think about the waves of time and how they roll across my shoulders. Thinkin' no clock is gonna get the best of me.
12. As I went down to the river to pray, Studyin’ about that good ol' way
13. God, there is gold hidden deep in the ground; God, there’s a hangman that wants to come around
14. She doesn't own a dress, Her hair is always a mess
15. Whoa-o...I’ve been banging my head against the wall, Whoa-o...for so long it seems I knocked it down, yeah it got knocked down
16. Shoot a dream in your arm and sleep away,I t's not the stuff that kills you that keeps your life at bay.
17. One dark day the trees began a trumpet sound,trumpet sound; We sat listening patiently, the sky was near, and I felt the trembling motion
18. Oh, I'm sailin' away my own true love, I'm sailin' away in the morning.
19. How I ever made it to you heaven only knows, With the doors and the windows to my inside closed
20. You say you heard every word, but I watched you turn away, Your eyes grew colder than winter
21. Long as I remember the rain been coming down. Clouds of mystery pouring confusion on the ground.
22. Mom & Dad, I'm fine. How are you? I have joined a small circus, that much is true. I'm a little malnourished, but try to relax. Could you find a better photo for the milk carton backs?

*It was twenty five but I couldn’t find the lyrics to three of my songs. One was a Latin chant by some Benedictine monks.

Sixteen Military Wives

So eventually I will get around to answering my art question (it is proving to be involved) but in the mean time enjoy a video from The Decemberists.



Sixteen Military Wives
The Decemberists

Sixteen military wives
Thirty-two softly focused brightly colored eyes
Staring at the natural tan
of thirty-two gently clenching wrinkled little hands
Seventeen company men
Out of which only twelve will make it back again
Sergeant sends a letter to five
Military wives, whose tears drip down through ten little eyes

Cheer them on to their rivals
Cause America can, and America can't say no
And America does, if America says it's so
It's so!

And the anchorperson on TV goes...
La de da de da

Fifteen celebrity minds
Leading their fifteen sordid wretched checkered lives
Will they find the solution in time
Using their fifteen pristine moderate liberal minds?
Eighteen academy chairs
Out of which only seven really even care
Doling out the garland to five
Celebrity minds, they're humbly taken by surprise

Cheer them on to their rivals
Cause America can, and America can't say no
And America does, if America says it's so
It's so!

And the anchorperson on TV goes...
La de da de da de-dadedade-da
La de da de da de-dadedade-da

Fourteen cannibal kings
Wondering blithely what the dinner bell will bring
Fifteen celebrity minds
Served on a leafy bed of sixteen military wives

Cheer them on to their rivals
Cause America can, and America can't say no
And America does, if America says it's so
It's so!

And the anchorperson on TV goes...
La de da de da de-dadedade-da
La de da de da de-dadedade-da
La de da de da de-dadedade-da-dedadeda-de de dadede-daaaaa

Concert

Sorry it’s been awhile since I have posted anything. Work has been going great with much design to do (so little time to write blog posts). This last Monday I went to go see Sam Beam (aka Iron and Wine) and Glen Hansard (aka the Swell Season) in concert. It was one of the best large concerts that I have been to. There was very little production to it, no fancy background images or fog, just great music and fun stories. Beam is one of the best lyricists I have run across and Hansard & co. really put on a fun show, effortlessly getting the audience into the music.

Here are some videos of these guys I found on YouTube (keep in mind the low quality of the videos does not do justice to the music):

The Swell Season


Iron and Wine




And here is a sketch of Beam I did at the concert. Not the best in the world but it was done standing up and I couldn't see the page I was drawing on. Kindof like the game in Cranium when you have to draw things with your eyes closed. It does highlight his awesome beard though.

Said the Joker to the Thief

We watched Batman Begins last night in preparation for the upcoming Dark Knight movie. I have to say that while providing a good foundation and having really good moments, the ending still seems over the top for me. I have higher expectations for the sequel due to several reasons:

The origin being out of the way.
While the rise of a superhero is important for establishing motivations and context, it is nice not having to spend a third of story time on it.

The focus on Harvey Dent’s rise and fall.
Harvey Dent has the potential to be more grounded as a character and more intertwined into Bruce’s life than Ras Al Gul. Let’s hope that the filmmakers have looked to The Long Halloween as inspiration.

Heath Ledger as Joker.
There is really no more to say.

So in further preparation for the movie I went ahead a finished up one of my many projects. It is a short comic featuring the lyrics of Bob Dylan’s ‘All Along the Watchtower’ as the narration and dialogue:

'All the more a pair of underwater pearls'

From my recent fishing trip to the Rio Grande I brought back a couple of resurrection ferns (I had some explaining to do going through airport security). These little plants grow in the desert and most of the year look withered and dead. But when it rains they spring to life, unfurl, and show of their bright green leaves. The following is a series of photographs I took after I had poured water on one of them. It took approximately 4 hours for it to fully unfurl.



This plant absolutely made Laura’s week and though seeing it many times growing up, I still marvel at the brilliant greens from a plant that a few hours earlier was dirt brown. A small example of creation revealing and reaffirming its creator in Christ the Redeemer.

The Devil Made Texas

I thought I would pass along a Texas folk song that I heard last weekend. (It's not making the strongest theological statement but I don’t think it was ever trying to)

_____________________________________

Oh, the devil in hell they say he was chained,

And there for a thousand years he remained;

He neither complained nor did he groan,

But decided he'd start up a hell of his own,

Where he could torment the souls of men

Without being shut in a prison pen;

So he asked the Lord if he had any sand

Left over from making this great land.

_____________________________________

The Lord He said, "Yes, I have plenty on hand,

But it's away down south on the Rio Grande,

And to tell you the truth, the stuff is so poor

I doubt it will do for a hell anymore."

The Devil went down and looked over the truck,

And he said if it came as a gift he was stuck,

For when he'd examined it carefully and well

He decided the place was too dry for a hell.

_____________________________________

But the Lord to just get the stuff off His hands

He promised the Devil He'd water the lands,

For He had some old water that was of no use,

A regular bog hole that stunk like the deuce.

So the contract was signed and the deed was given,

And the Lord went up to his spread up in heaven.

The Devil soon saw he had everything needed

To make a good hell and I'll say he succeeded.

_____________________________________

He scattered tarantulas over the road,

Put thorns on the cactus and horns on the toads,

He sprinkled the sand with millions of ants

So the man that sits down must wear soles on his pants.

He lengthened the horns of the Texas steer,

And added an inch to the jack rabbit's ear;

He put water puppies in all of the lakes,

And under the rocks he put rattlesnakes.

_____________________________________

He hung thorns and brambles on all of the trees.

He mixed up the dust with jiggers and fleas.

The rattlesnakes bites you, the scorpion stings,

The mesquito delights you by buzzing his wings.

The heat in the summer's a hundred and ten--

Too cool for the devil and too hot for men,

And all who remained in that climate soon bore

Stings, cuts, bites, scratches, and blisters galore.

_____________________________________

He quickened the buck of the bronco steed

And poisoned the feet of the centipede.

The wild boar roams in the black chaparral.

It's a hell of a place that we've got for a hell.

He planted red pepper beside of the brooks;

The Mexicans use them in all that they cook.

Just dine with a Mexican and you will shout,

"I've got hell on the inside as well as the out!"

_____________________________________

The Autopsy of a Piano

I heard this really cool story on NPR this morning about this team of musicians who play the piano in a very interesting way. Ten musician crowd around a piano that has been opened up and play it using strings and hammers and tongue depressors to get a full range of orchestra sounds.

Here is the NPR link:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18666248

Here is a video of one of their performances:

Friendly Beasts

We had a great Christmas this year with lots of good visiting with our family. We noticed an interesting phenomenon when we were sorting through pictures yesterday: we had taken far more photos of everybody’s pets then we had of family members. This could be a result of our own lack of domesticated companions or could be that the animals were simply more photogenic then our relatives (kidding…mostly). Whichever the case they make for a nice composition:


I have plenty of philosophical thoughts and discussion tangents running through my head but I feel like saving them for next year.

Jars of Clay Competition

Well, I made the first cut for the t-shirt competition. Here is my design and a brief description of the thoughts running through my head:



The incarnation of Christ heralds the arrival of peace into the chaotic, fallen world. It is interesting that our culture should juxtapose this gospel with the stress and disorder of the consumer season. In this design I wanted to incorporate the idea of peace in the midst of chaos by using the imagery of hibernation. The bears remain fast asleep throughout the blizzard above them knowing that through the storm there are the peaceful stars above. As the chaotic holiday season approaches, we too need reminding that the world has been redeemed unto Him who holds all creation firmly in place.

It is supposed to be a cross section of a winter night (J=stars, A=Clouds, R=Storm, S=Trees, OF=Snow, C=Leaves beneath the snow, L=Caves, A=Bears, Y= Ground beneath the bears). I hadn’t used photoshop in a while so it didn’t come out exactly like I planned.

Anyone who wants to see all the other t-shirts designs and to vote for your favorites go here:

http://www.nettwerk.com/contest/2007/jars_tshirt/