731 and Friends

03-03-10

March Playlist

Remember when you’d download the hottest new rap tracks on Napster and then burned said jamz with Nero to a $5.00 CD-R to play in your car? Sure half the time the songs you downloaded weren’t the ones you were looking for in the first place or if you did get the right ones they were the edited radio versions. Then you had to wait an hour for them to download because your dial-up modem could only get speeds of 56k. And then there was our old friend BUFFER UNDERRUN (I will curse that name to my grave) that rendered our overly pricey blank CDs into suburban ninja stars. But heck, it was FREE! That alone was worth all the time and exasperation, right? And through all these trials and tribulations we find out Lars Ulrich is speaking out against our very way of life trying to shut down the mix tape. YOU CAN’T OWN MUSIC, LARS! IT’S GOD’S MUSIC. 90s in a nutshell.

Anyway, I kind of miss having those CD-R mixtapes lying around. I miss the sharpie chicken scratch that reads “ride to skool mix” or “trip to florida phat jamz volume 3″. So I’m making a March Playlist. And in a year I’m going to look back on and think how foolish I was to like those songs. And I’m going to remember everything that went on in that month because of this playlist. So here goes.

01-09-10

Greetings from Interstate 95

In the spirit of Steve’s last post I decided to also give a little synopsis of my travels over break.

Setting out on New Years day (our departure was pushed forward by a day due to an impending storm) Dave and I loaded up the Cadillac and headed to his sister’s spot outside New Haven CT. As soon as we arrived we saw a family of deer on their front lawn which I thought were fake reindeer statues left over from the holidays until they started moving. It was rather late when we arrived and everyone was asleep but we were greeted by a series of wonderfully informative signs leading us down to the basement where the beer was. We drank a few, watched Chappelle show and hit the hay.

The next day we grabbed a slice of that famous New Haven coal fired apizza. Our stomachs were full and ready for all that Pennsylvania had to offer us. We arrived in Allentown around supper time and were quite surprised by the level of hospitality our hosts showed us. A homemade vegetarian sheppard’s pie for dinner, a show at a local venue called the secret art space and an impromptu historical tour of the Lehigh Valley region. Dawn and Joel were wonderful hosts and after breakfast at the Queen City Diner the next day we headed out towards all points south.

Hey looks like we crossed the mason dixon line, we’re finally in the South… ok, so when does it start getting warm? Apparently not in Richmond, the ole thermometer registered barely over 30. Luckily the warmth of our hosts Abi, Chelsea and Rosie made our visit quite enjoyable. We started with dinner at a local gastropub near the university. The place was bizarre – no menus, just a listing of entrees at the door, one sink for both bathrooms outside the actual toilet area and some bluegrass bands attracting a wealth of punk-looking loyalists. Once back at their apartment in the fan district we shared drinks, stories and played silly games to pass the time. We were sad to leave the next day, but forward progress was what we were after and warm weather was the dangling carrot.

We were now deep in the South. Although TomTom said we were 30 minutes outside Charleston there were absolutely no signs of an urban center in sight. Plantation Oaks was where we hung our hats that night. Nicole brought us to a Po-boy joint she had been looking to try on our way downtown for dinner. I, the catfish and Dave, deep friend whole quail. This was some serious southern comfort food as even on an empty stomach I wasn’t able to join the clean plates club that night. Driving around downtown we finally realized why we couldn’t see any tall buildings as we we approached city limits – there were none. Palmettos, yes ma’ams, neo classical southern mansions and a strong police presence were the language of this land. Looking around, it seemed we’d been transplanted to the post civil war, ante-bellum southern society that used to inhabit these hallowed grounds. It was time to leave, the warmth we’d been promised was still lacking and we had a long drive ahead of us the next morning.

95 is a fun road, it has a twisted sense of humor that you only get to know after driving it for days on end. Towards the end of our journey I could hear it’s Maniacal laugh that seemed to be saying “no matter how long you drive me you’ll never reach your destination. MUAHAHAHAH!” Ghosts of all the lives it had taken and speeding tickets its patron had received lingered in the air around us. The naive exuberance for being back on the road was slowly evaporating from my mind as I learned even after crossing the Florida border we still had over 7 hours to go. At least we had the car’s outside thermometer to watch as it climbed to the 80s right? Ok, that was a bit too optimistic, 70s? Fine, we’ll settle for 60s. WHAT?! we’re here and it’s barely crossed the 40 mark? Yup, record colds kept the mercury just slightly above the freezing mark the whole time we were in sunny FLA.

It’s the journey, not the destination that counts.

12-21-09

Life After Accounting: An Interview

I had a conversation with Allan walking home from a night at 731 a few years back when I still lived on Boylston. I didn’t know Allan that well at the time but surprisingly we had a terrific conversation discussing school, aesthetics and our plans for the future. He was a business major at the time and spoke to me about switching majors. He said he had always liked to draw and was interested in taking art classes at Northeastern. At the time I had also recently started taking classes in the art department for the multimedia portion of my degree. Both of us coming from analytical, math driven majors, were able to relate to one another in discussing our interests in graphic design, film, and traditional fine arts. From there on out I knew allan was destined for great things… or at least would be doing something he loved.

Here now 2 years later, I’ve compiled footage from an interview I did with allan as part of an ongoing series with members of the Mission Hill community. I’m glad Allan has kept up with pursuing his dreams of creating things that are beautiful and by what I gather of this interview it doesn’t seem he has plans of stopping anytime soon.

I’m lucky to have so many friends with artistic pursuits. Allan is one such person. Coming off a recent exhibition of his work at Savant Project, Allan’s show, “Life After Accounting”, is a series of highly geometric prints done with a restricted palette of opaque watercolors.
I had a conversation with Allan walking home from a night at 731 a few years back when I still lived on Boylston. I didn’t know Allan that well at the time but surprisingly we had a terrific conversation discussing school, aesthetics and our plans for the future. He was a business major at the time and spoke to me about switching majors. He said he had always liked to draw and was interested in taking art classes at Northeastern. At the time I had also recently started taking classes in the art department for the multimedia portion of my degree. Both of us coming from analytical, math driven majors, were able to relate to one another in discussing our interests in graphic design, film, and traditional fine arts. From there on out I knew allan was destined for great things… or at least would be doing something he loved.

12-13-09

Tony & “The Tape”

Last night Chris and I decided to interview some of the people that happened to be roaming the apartment at the time. We were desperately looking for content to edit and it looks like we found it. Based loosely off David Lynch’s Interview Project, I decided to ask people a series of questions off the cuff and see what their responses would be. We began this series of Basement Interviews with Tony, asking him about the infamous “tape” but later tailored our questioning around people’s personal lives. In this series of interviews I strive to capture the essence of each individual by prodding and churning their emotional innards, hoping their passions rise to the surface.

More interviews will be posted in the upcoming weeks. If you’d like to be interviewed, leave a comment here with a way to get in touch with you.

12-11-09

Batso Episode 053

**Watch this first**
http://interviewproject.davidlynch.com/www/#/all-episodes/053-batso

I’m always so quick to write people off. I come to some sort of summary based on some minor detail of their appearance and then decide I know their whole story. It’s really such bullshit and after watching some of these interviews I realize the evil of my ways. Even some of the people I know quite well I learn new things about all the time.

Batso is a simple man. He has his passions: fixing cars, getting tatoos, karate. Sure he looks scary but he’s a tender man at heart. He was never properly educated but he doesn’t let that hold him back. He’s extremely humble in his pursuit of knowledge. By no means is learning to read and write a simple task, and especially not for a man in his 70s.

He says “at age 59 I leaned how to live… I was always a latecomer”. He’s just a man, living in Connecticut trying to make something of himself. Had I encountered Batso on the street I’d probably write him off as white trash. A no good bar fly trying to pick fights and start trouble with authorities. I’m ashamed to admit these things, but I realize now that you should never be so quick to judge. I don’t know the guy behind the counter at Fuentes that sells me liquor, I don’t know what he does when he gets off. Why should I think him to be any less than myself?

The worst is at parties. I hate being judged walking into a place where I don’t know anyone, yet I do it all the time. When someone walks into a party I’m at, that I don’t know I’ll usually come up with some preconceived bullshit notion of who they are or what they do. How fucked up is that. It’s insane. After watching this video I realize I’ve got a long way to go in my life’s goal to see with eyes unclouded by hate.

12-01-09

FFW – Salaam Bombay

This week for Foreign Film Wednesdays we’re ditching the euro-centric approach and hoping over to Asia to show Salaam Bombay, an Indian flick.

It’s a movie about children in the streets of Bombay, left to raise themselves. “There they have an identity, and a measure of hope. Of course, in the best of possible worlds something would be “done” about them, but “Salaam Bombay!” takes place far from such a world, and the movie is about children doing the best they can for themselves.” – Roger Ebert.

Come on over, check out the film, stay for the discussion, recieve the darshan you’ve been looking for. Starts at 9:30!