So my BFFs, unbeknown to me, formed a pact about a month ago in preparation for their duties as groomsmen at an upcoming wedding.
So all involved got to work on planting the seeds for the communal moustache garden. These two went the full-on beard route with intent to trim each other up in the second leg of their transit.
As mentioned, total surprise to me. I’m just glad I had some way to chronicle this sudden adventure. Full set is here.
Given my current work load (ha) I’ve the profound ability to peruse many a site while shackled to my corporate sponsored drudgery. As such my morning browsing reliably brings me to a few dozen sites and in it’s not uncommon for degrees of familiarity or even outright relationships to exist between two seemingly unrelated topics.
The second organizational unit in the ever-reaching branches that compose my RSS Tree (the first being _Acquaintances) is a myriad of artists I follow such as Ashley Wood, Rob Sheridan, Thomas Babbey, Eliza Gauger, Christopher McCulloch, and others. It was via Jhonen Vasquez that I first found out about the closing of Nova Express, then later over at Coilhouse.
While I detest LA, and this is a topic that seems to come up every few days in conversation, it’s a shame that yet another odd, properly unique snowflake is consumed in the flames of consumerism. I really can’t phrase it better than those previously linked did, and I think it likely that most have a similar place they can relate to in the same manner.
The next step in this vapid flow chart brought me to the flickr set of user Crashwork which accordingly led to pictures of relics from the Residenz in Munich. Being an iconic point for any tourist in the area I was unsurprised that many of the shots I took mirrored those of this particular user which were taken two years prior.
The above (Antiquarium) adorns postcards and is perhaps the most common amongst shots taken at the Residenz.
[ all shots in the left column are via Crashwork ]
The world feels just a little smaller.
I can remember a time of card catalogs. Musty drawers concealing endless yellowed note cards whose texture advertised the use of a typewriter which permanently tattooed each once-alive pressing with a sparse bit of information. Reliable? Hardly. Perhaps some Neanderthal before had misfiled, or saints forbid, entirely removed the precise entry you were searching for. It was a time of etiquette, perseverance, and frustration. Point of interest, the scariest scene in the original Ghostbusters film for me was when I watched, mouth agape in horror, as all of the cards were whisked into the air, alphabetization thrown to the winds like so many fall leaves from a autumnal storm.
Admittedly, modern techniques are better, more efficient, but I am glad to have encountered that dark time prior to the omnipotent search algorithm in which the dusty smell of discovery went alongside the gritty feel of paper and the sight of hastily smudged type print.
I wanted to talk about cross referencing and the flow-chart-esque manner in which seemingly different interests overlap and converge. More to the point, that of two experiences of mine with music and literature. The first and most memorable was that of my discovery of one eldritch, blankly staring, author.
I was in grade school when a project was assigned in Art class to reconstruct a CD album cover (yes, I am young, for CDs were abundant, though I still taped everything to listen to 
it portably) using chalk on paper. This was the mid 90s and music being what it was I was exposed to the expected American alternative that dominated the airwaves. Admittedly I enjoyed some, I mean who didn’t like Nevermind when they first heard it, but the only band at the time I could claim I was a fan of was Metallica. I proceeded to bust out the black and blue to draw my own electric chair.
Though I couldn’t pinpoint when I can recall hearing Motorbreath for the first time (first song heard), but that was the beginning of the end for me. Books, shirts, fan club – you name it, I ate it up. It was as an impressionable youth that I listened to Ride the Lightning and simultaneously read up on the band’s influences among which was an author whose works inspired The
Thing that Should Not Be and of course, The Call of Ktulu.
It’s strange to think of a time in which what I consider to be one of those cultural references that everyone knows was, in fact, unknown to me. I picked up a collected works which contained several of Mr. Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s works and the mark was made. Somehow a metal band had introduced me to an early 1900’s author and, over time, a subculture all of its own which has seemingly done nothing but grow and pulsate rhythmically over the years.
It was recently that history manifested a sort of repeat performance, only this time it was when reading an interview with the members of a more recent band, slash – decommissioned airship aeronauts*, that another bit of literature reached out to drag me forcibly into the author’s creations. Regrettably I did not at first hasten to acquire said series, and it was only after months of waiting that I gave up my faith in the Chicago Public Library to provide said trilogy and went forth to purchase my own. I am referring in this case to His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman. 
The fact that the books have recently seen a film transition did nothing but set a deadline for when I had to have them read by.
And read them I did. My commute offers the luxury of being able to read for a solid 2 hours, 5 times a week, which when coupled with my lunch break averages roughly 15 hours every 5 days, guaranteed. Needless I say flew through them and enjoyed the story on a level I haven’t experienced in quite some time, the measurement of which can be indicated by the sheer existence and general amount of babbling I have enacted above.
So the book has my endorsement, and while I am late to the game, as is predictably the case, it pleased me immensely to read it and will please me, thusly, to recommend you do the same if you have not already.
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*And how did I come across (un)said band?
So 7 years ago I heard of a band, which led me to another band, to yet another, which then lead me to a book. Neat. Granted, it’s pretty popular at the moment but for me the shock factor (for lack of a better term) is comparable to finding out that Eugene Hutz played with James Kochalka back in his Burlington days.