Rejects, rarity, and recognition

A few days after we moved to Austin, elle and I were browsing the Half Price Books store on Guadalupe near 32nd. I was trying to take my mind off of a day of job hunting - I had been offered a tech support job at Unisys but didn't want it, so I stalled them while waiting for a reply from UT. I needed a diversion from worry, so I decided to look though all the 7" records in the store, something I hadn't done since I worked for the flagship Half Price store in Dallas.

But first, some background: There were a lot of DIY punk/new wave records released in Texas during the peak years of 1977-1982 (my band even made one). There is one, however, which is considered the grail - the Back To School EP by The Rejects. Here's why it's so sought after: 1. It's their only recording (If you don't count a live track or two) ; 2. It's surprisingly good; and 3. There were only 100 copies pressed - an impossibly tiny number for punk collectors worldwide to fight over - and that's assuming all of them have survived (I know, for example, that my band's record was thrown away by a few old girlfriends). There's a good article about The Rejects and this record here.

I had been flipping through the 7" records for about thirty minutes when I found the grail. Now, at that time, I didn't really know it was the grail; I knew it was a 1980 record from a San Antonio band; I also knew it must be worth more than the sticker Half Price had on it - 98 cents. I finished looking at the records, grabbed the Rejects and a couple other singles, and went to find elle.

As we were heading for the checkout, a kid in his twenties (who, it turns out, was a huge collector of Texas punk records) saw me carrying The Rejects and asked if I was going to buy it; I said yes. He immediately offered me $20, then $40 for it. I declined as politely as possible, telling him I wanted to buy it because I too had been in a band back then. He then said that I reminded him of someone, and asked where my band was from. I had no sooner said "Mesquite" than he blurted out "The U.S. Mods! I have your record!" It was the first time I've been even halfway recognized for being in the band, some 20-odd years after we split up.

Elle and I talked to him for a bit while in line, and before I reached the register, he made one final offer: 60 dollars for The Rejects. Again I said no thanks, but I did agree to take his e-mail address and contact him if I changed my mind. I did some research later and found out I had been correct to turn down the money - online auction results for The Rejects EP range from about $750 to $1000.

I took this, the first record I bought as an Austin resident, as a sign that things would go very well for us here.

on the hi-fi: The Rejects, Back to School EP
on the reading table: The Austin Chronicle, Jan. 23 issue.

The piccolo seductress

When I started at North Mesquite High School, I was still green 'n' keen enough to arrive early - before 8:00 am. Since first period didn't start until 8:25, I usually stopped by the band hall, where the Varsity band practiced during what was called zero period, beginning at 7:30. I would quietly take a place in the back to read and listen to whatever they were working on. My aim was to go unnoticed, but it didn't work - it led to meeting a girl in the band who I've since dubbed The Piccolo Seductress.

My normal method for finding dates in middle school had been almost completely passive; I often let my sisters do all the work. They usually had friends who were interested, but too shy to approach me directly (tell your brother I like him!). I was so accustomed to this indirect, through-the-sibling approach that I was taken by surprise the morning during my freshman year when a senior girl, who played piccolo in the Varsity band, walked over after rehearsal and introduced herself.

She was surprisingly smart and funny, and I found out during our conversation that I had unintentionally become the talk of the flute/piccolo section. She, the sassiest piccoloist of the bunch, had decided to act. She asked if I would be back the next morning, and we began meeting regularly between zero and first period. She was seventeen, I was fourteen - a huge age difference, or so I thought at the time (there's a picture of me in an earlier post from around the time we got together).

A wild and eventful six-month fling followed, during which we saw a lot of movies - she managed to get me into my first screening of A Clockwork Orange at fourteen (after we discovered we'd both read and loved the book). I was struck by how independent she was - she had a car and an after school job, and seemed to come and go as she pleased.

It was a relationship that couldn't last, though, no matter how great the companionship, conversation, and sex were. The same take-charge personality that led her to seek me out had a dark and abrasive side to it. The independence I admired was driven by a desperation to escape a mother she despised (I was witness to one particularly harrowing screaming match between them). We both soon moved on to the next lucky person that our practice of high-school-serial-monogamy demanded, but I'll always recall The Piccolo Seductress as the first girl in my experience to reverse the roles of hunter/hunted, which wasn't such a bad feeling for a change.

on the dvd player: A Clockwork Orange, deluxe edition.
on the reading table: 2600, Winter 2008-2009.

Aught-eight to aught-nine

I've been lucky - I've had many great years (senior year of high school, graduation year from college, the year I got married, the year we moved to Austin, among many others). I've also had a couple of years which were not so good, dominated by uncertainty and anxiety (sophomore year at college was like this). 2008, though, fits under the middle category of "good" years.

Good mostly, it turns out, on the job front. Elle took a job on campus this past year; this means we can drive in (or ride the UT shuttle) together and have lunch together. As a bonus, our commuting expenses have dropped to almost nothing, because we live about three miles from the UT tower where we both work. We both received major promotions this year. I even have a staff now so I can concentrate on the web UI full-time.

As good as 2008 was, though, I'd like 2009 to be less about the job and more about creative pursuits - I've got artwork to make, websites to design (I own several domains which are waiting for content), writing and podcasting to do, a house to renovate - elle and I are even planning a recording project.

So my resolution is this: while the past year was about the career, I'll work in '09 on those things that are mine.

On the TV: The Twilight Zone marathon is playing my all-time favorite episode now - "The After Hours" with Anne Francis as a truant mannequin:


A lot of stuff on the reading table this vacation:
Einstein: His Life and Universe (Isaacson); Babylon's Burning (Heylin); Ranters and Crowd Pleasers (Marcus); Factory Records: The Complete Graphic Album; The Best of LCD (WFMU); Big Star: The Story of Rock's Forgotten Band (Jovanovic); The Place of Houses (Moore); and Linotype Machine Principles (an obsolete book from 1940).

Thanks to William Burroughs

We mostly ignore the offensive christian implications of this week's holiday, but we do have three time-honored turkey-day traditions. One is a feast with family and friends. The second is listening to "Alice's Restaurant" (which can always be found playing on at least one Austin radio station on the holiday) . The third, though, is my favorite - I always listen to William Burroughs' A Thanksgiving Prayer, as I have every year since the late eighties.

on the hi-fi: TG24 - Throbbing Gristle
on the reading table: Striking Images, Chronicle Books

Billboard Liberation Front

I love the work of The Billboard Liberation Front as much as I hate the corporate criminals who ruin the landscape with huge slabs of advertising. The BLF's work is both thought provoking and subversive, forcing liars to tell the truth - at least until they can hire a crew to cover up the truth.

One of their latest works:
Here's the before--


And here's the same billboard after improvements by the BLF:


There's much more at their site linked above.

on the hi-fi: Joy Division, An Ideal for Living
on the reading table: House of Leaves (Danielewski)

Put the book down and look at the camera

Looking for "Mod" memorabilia of me and my old bandmates led me to these historical artifacts depicting the formative years of Weird's Last Stand. Travel back with me now, back to those golden days of yesteryear:

Me at eight years old, with my first guitar.

At 11 - Yuletide greetings from me and Santa Dog. It was about this time I started my first job working for my father in house renovation. You've never seen a more frail kid try to swing a hammer with his little stick arms in your life.


At 14, the boy with the most cake. I had yet to discover the evils of sugar. I'm still a few months away from giving it up to "The Piccolo Seductress" (see entry).


At 20 I was a member of a band called The Tickets (a great band name suggested by our drummer Tracye - it was, in fact, the only good name we ever had).


At 24. I think the person on the other end of the phone was The When Girl, so named because she always wanted to know when we were getting married.

I guess leaving him alone and minding our own business is not an option

the text:
India

Here is a man of India.
He is praying to his god.
His god cannot help him.
This man must know about Jesus.
Can you think of some ways to help him?

(from a christian coloring book)

Beuy's hare and the seven boxes

Joseph Beuys had a performance piece I've always considered a favorite: "How To Explain Pictures To A Dead Hare". In it, Beuys, his head covered in gold leaf, cradled a dead hare in his arms and whispered to it (presumably about art) for three hours. It's striking as a piece of both great beauty and great futility. I thought about that poor leoprid as I cradled the last of my boxes of pictures in my arms while organizing the garage studio over this past weekend.

How, I thought, would I explain my picture collection to either a dead hare or living sane person? Here goes nothing: I've been gathering pictures to use in my art since middle school, sifting through tons of old printed matter for photographs, illustrations, clip art, and interesting typography. The collection started slowly, but got an early boost when I found a huge stack of 1930's magazines in the attic of one of my father's rental houses. It really exploded, though, during the time I was head nighttime buyer at the flagship Half Price Books store in Dallas.

I've always maintained that people are delusional, and my years of buying books proved it (Elle had similar proof driven home to her during the years she bought records from the general public). Someone was always trying to sell us stuff which was in no condition to be re-sold. Normally, my co-workers would just absent-mindedly recycle the paper, but I could never bring myself to condemn an old book to pulp before flipping through it for salvageable pictures. After so many years of this, I found myself sharing living space with seven full boxes, each containing from 4000-5000 hysterical/historical images.

The sources have been all kinds of printed matter from the period of about 1900 to 1960 - magazines, textbooks, catalogs, encyclopedia; medical, technical and scientific books; along with illustrated paper ephemera of all types. It was a time when illustrators could actually draw and photographers really had an eye - and all of it carefully graphic-designed to convey knowledge which is now obsolete, discredited, or politically incorrect - as dead as Beuy's hare.

I recall that Elle asked how many of these images I had, while we were preparing to make good our escape to Austin. After some ciphering, I said, "about 30,000". Last week, however, alone in the garage with those heavy boxes, it seemed like much more, as it has every time we moved them to a new house. I silently asked that lifeless yet art-appreciating bunny for his estimate, and could swear I heard him reply very faintly, but with a certainty which could only come from one who's seen the other side: "More than you'll live to use."

What's on for autumn

So if I list the projects, my twisted thinking goes, I'll be more apt to stay rapt and see them wrapped. Here, then, is what's on for autumn:

1. The Hallowe'en card. I'm now finalizing the choice of images. This one must have all the Photoshop and InDesign work done in time to have it printed and mailed by 12 October.

2. Elle and I are going to spend about a week's worth of evenings finishing up the redesign of her Yardbirds site. The URL will change to one I reserved for her a year ago: yardbirdsphotos.com

3. The podcast. Details withheld for now, but the code phrase is "Thrifty Listening".

4. Hiring my assistant. We've winnowed the resumes from 147 down to 50, then to 14. I need to get it down to the 5 we'll interview.

5. Finishing the garage studio.

6. And as always, there are plenty of things to read - mostly software and coding stuff this time: The iLife suite, the Adobe CS3 suite, Dreamweaver, SQL/PHP, the CSS Missing Manual, and the one I'm most excited about now: Logic Studio.

on the hi-fi: The Finders, The Razzles
on the reading table: See #6.

2 September

Good news this time, no kidding and (almost) no cynicism. The new fiscal year begins at UT on 2 September, and my promotion kicks in - a new job at a new pay grade. Which means basically I'm doing my old job, but they're calling it something different and throwing more money at me to do it. I lobbied for the title "Webbastard", but since there's no such title on the reclassification list, I'll probably settle for something more serious. I'll also be hiring an assistant to take over some parts of my current job, so I can concentrate on the web UI full time.

on the hi-fi: Stronger Than Dirt, the special Power Pop edition.
on the reading table: Tutorials on Apple's Logic Studio.

Wish your picture was you

You know how several things can happen to you almost at once and all of them seem to illustrate a common theme? At worst, they can seem to comprise a miniature cloud which follows you around, raining on you alone. At best, they can combine to form a kind of individualized zeitgeist (and hey, I've got a name for it - a Personal Pan Zeitgeist, which calls to mind both the slightly sad "dine alone" pizza and lusty Greek god, root of the word "panic"), the component parts of which seem to have been designed to mesh with whatever abstraction you're most taken with at the moment.

Max Wertheimer, one of the fathers of Gestalt Theory, spoke of "our innate tendency to constellate" things which have similarity, proximity and economy of structure. Example: Your car dies on the road, you get out to look under the hood and accidentally lock the keys in it; you set out to walk and it starts to rain. The similarity (bad) and proximity (in time) of these events lead you to to connect dots and make a (fallacious in this case) gestalt conclusion: "I'm cursed".

Which brings me to yesterday. I was driving, running errands and listening to a great radio program called "Twine Time" on the public radio station here in Austin. The night before, Elle and I had rented the 1928 silent film "The Man Who Laughs" with Conrad Veidt as Gwynplaine, a carnival performer who was surgically mutilated as a child, his mouth carved into a permanent, hideous grin. His picture has served as my icon on some communities.

The thought process while driving is desultory and tangential, so in addition to the film, I was also thinking about appearance vs. reality and simulation, having recently re-read Baudrillard's essay "The Precession of the Simulacra", which I didn't pay enough attention to in art theory class when it was assigned reading. Suddenly, my mini-trance was broken by Paul Ray on the radio as he cued up the 1953 Lloyd Price song "I Wish Your Picture Was You". And I thought to myself as I parked at the post office, "of course". Constellation complete.

on the hi-fi: The Flashing Lights - Where The Change Is
on the reading table: "Art, Design, and Gestalt Theory" - Roy Behrens.