photos from the best day ever...

...which involved 2-on-2 basketball, kamiak butte, a campfire, s'mores, climbing on playground equipment, wild turkey, homemade pizza and salad, movies, and various and sundry other awesome things...like, um, other people...

From summer '09

From summer '09

From summer '09

From summer '09

From summer '09

From summer '09

From summer '09

From summer '09

From summer '09

From summer '09

From summer '09

trent reznor quits the internet, does so more earnestly than ryan adams

i'm excerpting from this story originally.

reznor's explanation for ending his successful (?) and interesting (!) foray into web 2.0 runs thusly:

It's been an interesting experiment over the last couple of years or so. Faced with leaving the infrastructure of traditional record labels and figuring out what the right thing to do is in this new world - I found myself realizing that for me to have any concept of how to interact with the community and know what they might want / what they find appropriate, I need to immerse myself in that world and live it for a while. The reason no record label knows how to market anything to new media is they don't live there. They don't get it because they don't use it. What you've seen happen with the marketing and presentation of NIN over the last years is a direct result of living next to you, listening to you, consuming with you and interacting with you. Directly. There's no handlers or PR people here, it's me and my guys - that's it. There's no real plan, even - it's just trying to do the right thing that respects you the fan, the music, and me the artist. That's the goal - a mutual and shared respect.

When Twitter made it's way to my radar I looked at it as a curiosity, then started experimenting. I thought it through and in light of where I was / am in my career I decided to lower the curtain a bit and let you see more of my personality. I watched some of you get more engaged because you started to realize there's a person (flaws and all) back there, and I watched some of you recoil in horror because I'm not what you projected on me. All expected. I'm not as concerned about "breaking" your idea of NIN at this point. It is what it is and I am what I am. The relationship between artist and fan is changing if you haven't noticed, along with the way we consume and experience music and even communicate since the internet arrived.

The problem with really getting engaged in a community is getting through the clutter and noise. In a closed environment like nin.com a lot of this can be moderated away, or code can be implemented to make it more difficult for troublemakers to persist. It's tedious and feels like wasted energy doing that shit, but some people exist to ruin it for others - and they are the ones who have nothing better to do with their time. Example: on nin.com, there's 3-4 different people that each send me between 50 - 100 message per day of delusional, often threatening nonsense. We can delete them, but they just sign back up and start again. Yes, we are implementing several changes to address this, but the point is it quickly gets very old weeding through that stuff.

Back to Twitter. I approached that as a place to be less formal and more off-the-cuff, honest and "human". I was not expecting to broadcast details of my love life there, but it happened because I'm in love and it's all I think about and that's that. If this has bummed you out or destroyed what you've projected on me, fair enough - it's probably time for you to leave. You are right, I'm not the same person I was in 1994 (and I'm happy about that). Are you?

Looks like the Metal Sludge contingency has discover Twitter! Finally! For those of you that don't know what this is, please let me explain. Metal Sludge is the home of the absolutely worst people I've ever come across. It's populated mainly by unattractive plump females who publicly fantasize about having sex with guys in bands. Kind of like a role-playing game where people NOBODY will fuck make up stories about their incredible sexual encounters with people they WISH they could fuck. It would be kind of funny in a sad and pathetic way except the fun doesn't stop there - hate and good old-fashioned outright blatant racism are also encouraged to spice things up and remind you how truly ugly these scourges are. TRULY ugly on the inside (the outside is obvious).

Cutter's tip for my friends there: remember to cut along the length of vein, not across. Bigger payoff.

So when you see the new accounts that pop up daily on Twitter spewing exactly the kind of thing I just discussed, usually from picture-less creatively named profiles, spewing hate at Mariqueen and I, take a moment to visualize the sad couple people behind them.
A few years ago some people tuned me in to that world and when I figured out who these people were, I was amazed that I'd been seeing them in the front rows of the shows for months. I really don't understand what kind of "fan" spends that kind of time and money to travel across the country seeing a band, to then dedicate an incredible amount of time and energy into non-stop hate diatribes online. That one puzzles me a little.

Anyway, I'm bored on a long bus drive and there's no real moral to the story here, just writing. I will be tuning out of the social networking sites because at the end of the day it's now doing more harm than good in the bigger picture and the experiment seems to have yielded a result. Idiots rule.

I had thought a while ago about attempting to start a mainstream public forum that required real verification of it's participants for purposes of context. The idea was to have a place where you can actually discuss whatever and have some idea of who you're conversing with. For example, if we were discussing drumming techniques and you can see that someone participating in the discussion is a drum instructor vs. a 13 year old kid Googling answers, you'd have the proper context in which to have a potentially valid discussion. If we were discussing EDLC's heart condition and a real cardiologist speaks up, I'd value his opinion over, say FredFuckFaceWhateverHisLastFuckingNameIs's "opinion". Know what I mean? Anyway, we're in a world where the mainstream social networks want any and all people to boost user numbers for the big selloff and are not concerned with the quality of experience.

With all of that said, I have business in the real world to attend to including wrapping up the live version of NIN, DOING some cool new shit and spending as much time as possible with the most amazing woman in the world.

i guess i don't really have any personal stake in this (i used to be a NIN fan way back in the day, and while i don't obsess over their music anymore, i recognize simultaneously that it's clever music and that a certain percentage of reznor's fanbase have the exact problem he quotes: his music is their justification for hating everything and when he ceases to provide that justification they take it out on him). however, i couldn't help but be reminded of a certain mr. adams who recently pulled a similar stunt (and in the process also "quit" music, however one does that). now, despite the immense amount of respect i have for mr. adams as an artist, i have to admit that reznor has handled a similar situation with 75 times more aplomb. read: no telling off fans, no alienating his bandmates, no using web 2.0 social programs as a weapon against everyone he wanted to gripe at and then immediately after claiming that it was too much trouble to be online and disappearing. just a straight-up acknowledgement that being on today's web and trying to be a human being while there are thousands or millions who see you as something else is really complicated, and exhausting (not that i would know...being the president of a multi-billion-dollar crossword puzzle doormat company doesn't really work the same way as being a rockstar). artists like reznor likely have a hard time being "real" on twitter, facebook, etc., but ultimately it's necessary that they also try anyway. because the upside of these tools is that they have the potential to strip away marketing campaigns and record company taglines and allow the artist to speak directly to the fans. for free. so. why the hell can't we just shut up and listen?

ah! i remember the other hated things now!

here we go:

1. grizzly bear. i don't "hate" grizzly bear, per se. i guess i just don't get all the ruckus. i made similar comments previously regarding bon iver. i just don't get it. i mean, i've listened to their albums, and while i don't find them offensively bad, i find that they sound like any number of other bands of their genre(s). similar production, similar instrumentation, similar arrangement, similar lyrics, similar singing voice(s). and before any gets all "different musical artists are often similar and have similar influences, DURR!"...yeah, i know. i've taken that fact into consideration. i think my issue with bands like grizzly bear and bon iver is that i don't see why people think they're so special at all, and the amount of indie rock hype surrounding them is so constant and overwhelming that i feel like i'm missing a piece to a really obvious puzzle when i don't furiously masturbate everytime i put in one of their CDs. sure, this is just the whole "art is subjective" thing all over again, but...it's also started making me think about "indie" rock and what it's become in the last few years, and something i've noticed is that "indie" rock now has rock stars, just like regular rock has rock stars. just like you can't read about "normal" rock without reading about U2, you can't read about "indie" rock without reading about grizzly bear. is it inherently bad that some "indie" bands get more exposure than others? of course not; it's the reality of the business. i guess i'm just bummed because something i really enjoyed when i first started listening to non-mainstream music was the fact that there wasn't as much of a prevlance of gatekeepers to work past: there were no led zeppelins, no rolling stones, no dylans. anybody could be MVP any day of the week. now it doesn't feel that way anymore, in this weird indie-but-not-indie music atmosphere. i guess i don't hate grizzly bear, just the fact that they get all the hype in a genre that is supposedly meant to constantly cultivate new and underappreciated talent...i think these guys are more than appreciated enough.

2. this article, and, by extension, the huffington post. the huffington post is another of those things that i feel like i'm supposed to like but can't really make myself do it. mostly because of articles like this and the overall we're-the-cool-kid-on-the-block attitude the post espouses when in reality their writers are smart enough and talented enough to be adults-on-the-block. take the above article for example: there are some thought-provoking points in the article, but analysis of them is given short shrift in favor of catchy turns of phrase.

i find it really frustrating that apparently the idea behind the article ends up being "you should be fit because it's cool now"...not because it's good for you, or because it improves your quality of life. hell no! you should exercise because everyone else is doing it, because finally going to the gym doesn't require and amount of self-confidence or security...EVERYONE goes to the gym now! it's the thing to do!

i do appreciate the article's points about the motivation behind "bad" college-drinking-style behavior. it's a stage of life that i (and probably every other college student ever) went through, and it's kind of nice to see that acknowledged in the article.

i'm not being very articulate here...hmm...i guess that the thing that really rubs me the wrong way about the article is its insistence on coolness as motivation. when i did go through my sad-sack-of-shit bar-hopping phase, i didn't go into it with the hope that somehow it would make me cooler, or somehow i would become more socially relevant if i was drunk and at the bars all the time. i dove into bar culture because i knew it was experience i really needed to have to be able to understand it, and it was essentially something that i would always lack the experience of if i didn't try it out. also, it was where all of my friends were starting to hang out, and it seemed like it would be a fun new venue for socializing.

looking back, it pretty much worked out the way i imagined: i had a lot of good times, did a lot of ridiculous stuff i wouldn't be stupid enough to do now (but never would have become smart enough to know to avoid if i hadn't done it in the first place), and ultimately came out of the experience a wiser person. i feel the same way about being "healthy" (whatever that means). i've tried lots of different diets, exercise regiments, etc. and every one has been a learning experience. but it's always been about learning through those experiences, not trying to gain some sort of social capital or taking part in a trend because it seems like the thing to do. this article (and the attitudes of a lot of people that i've spoken to about either exercise/health or drinking in the past few years) seem to agree: it's okay to be a drunk asshole for awhile as long as you stop when it stops being cool...and it's okay to be an exercise maniac as long as you're doing what's cool. what happened to other motivations for doing such things? you know, motivations like gaining life experience or just being healthy for the sake of being healthy? i enjoy hanging out with friends and being a social creature just as much as the next guy, but shouldn't you have some strata of self-motivation that isn't reliant on outside judgment to spur you on?

things that i currently hate, part eleventy-four

here are some things that fucking SUCK!!!

umm...so i read the road today, finally. the mccarthy one, and not the kerouac one. i like the kerouac one.

granted, i expected a lot out of this book, as it won the pulitzer and everyone i know told me it was basically the best book ever. i'm glad i read it...but i didn't like it. i really liked mccarthy's descriptive language, and he's obviously a hell of a writer. i'm going to try to read something else of his and see how i feel about it. but the road just seemed sort of pointless to me. i love post-apocalyptic stories, love them, but this wasn't so much a story as it was a poem, really. the only thing that ever seemed to changed or become interesting in varied ways was the language itself. there were never any real plot threads, or character development, etc...just the engaging/mysterious setting and the shockingly dire and depressing circumstances...but the newness and emotion of those two things wore off after about 50 pages. i just wasn't that interested, and i don't understand why mccarthy won the pulitzer for this book, honestly. i hear he's written some other, better things. maybe that's why. but this book specifically just bored me. he did some cool stylistic things, but nothing that i haven't already seen other, less well-known writers do.

i like diet coke!!! FUUUUUUCK!!!

another thing i do not like, though, is the movie valkyrie. i watched it the other night, at daniel's awesome popsicle party. or at least, i mostly watched it, while also inhaling lots of popsicles and talking to peeps. and it was pretty lame. as most people will tell you, it is really difficult for me to dislike a film. however, i disliked valkyrie. tom cruise actually gave a pretty decent performance. however, i felt like the film sort of circled itself rather than having any kind of involved plot...hey! the movie opens with an attempt to assassinate hitler! and it fails! and then there's another, more complicated attempt involving tom cruise! and it fails! then they try the exact same thing again! and it fails again! then everyone is slowly executed during a drawn-out overly dramatic closing scene! and then the movie ends. that's it. the entire movie screamed "artsy!" so loud that i wanted earplugs. at one point, during a bombing raid (which is completely gratuitous and serves no purpose within the greater narrative of the story), tom cruise realizes his children left his record player on upstairs while they're all huddling together in the bomb shelter. and on the record player? "flight of the valkyries" by wagner. seriously. and not only do they spend entirely too much time playing the song, then they zoom in tight on the record itself just in case you don't know the title and make the connection on your own. i realize that part of the point here is that this inspires tom cruise's character to come up with the plan to take advantage of project valkyrie, but there are a shitload of these heavy-handed moments throughout the film that simultaneously scream "look! TRICKY!" and "well, our audience is obviously completely idiotic, so let's make sure they understand that this Means Something!" it was a little insulting.

there was something else i hated, too. but i can't remember what it was. i'll be back if i remember.

HATE!!!