external monologue

goodbye alabama (ave), hello tennessee (ave)

with any luck we'll be moving into our new office digs sometime early next week, which means that this is effectively our last week here in the cross household on the corner of alabama and 43rd streets. it also means that we'll no longer be greeted by zachary cross, with his latest lego invention, or teddy cross, with his cornsnake named "slithery", at the back door. hopefully it will mean a cooler working environment with honest-to-goodness central cooling and heating (no more of this window-unit foolishness) and fewer ladybugs hibernating in the corners and dive-bombing the programmers. on the other hand, since it only has plate glass windows along the tennessee avenue side, it means no more breezy days in the office with all the doors and windows open.

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friday-mp3-of-the-week: the song this week comes from an artist named a. c. newman. as his website describes him, "you might know A.C. Newman as Carl Newman, the spry redheaded leader of The New Pornographers," a band that i've raved about here before. he has an album coming out in june called the slow wonder and has released the first single off of it, "drink to me babe, then." (thanks to mesh for the heads up on this guy.)

no big plans for the weekend, i don't think there are even any films out that i want to see. i'll probably end up shooting at least a story or two for the Pulse, we'll see.

mountain ridge

okay, so its not one of my favorite photographs, but i figure some of you ex-chattanoogans out there might appreciate this shot of the mountain. its the view coming from alton park, driving past the winn-dixie and looking up at the ridge. it probably would benefit from being a bit larger, as you could see more clearly the enormous houses perched precariously on the ridge, but i like the consistency of the smaller format here on loapher. hopefully something better tomorrow.

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volume 2, here i come...

lentfree

since the conclusion of the lent season, i've made a few musical purchases, but this would have to be the most significant collection of CDs i've bought in some time (perhaps ever, because i rarely do such things as buy boxsets of CDs). its the critically acclaimed 69 love songs box set by the magnetic fields. thus far i'm still working my way through disc 1, eagerly anticipating the next two. i wish there were a freebie mp3 somewhere online that i could share, but i've yet to come across one, so you may just have to go and pick it up yourself. i've always liked the magnetic fields, but when i saw pieces of april (during lent), which stephin merritt did the soundtrack for, i knew that i'd have to buy the box set at the next possible opportunity (now).

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extra photos today: i got an email from my editor at the pulse yesterday telling me that he'd submitted my photos to a local radio station's website. apparently WGOW does a weekly review of interesing local photos and this week they're mine from the rough and rowdy brawl.

hashing it out at the pickle barrel

ari and aaron hash it out at the pickle barrel. on friday night, while tim and ari were in town, we went down to the pickle barrel after an evening of presbytery meetings up at covenant. as often happens with this crowd, the discussion quickly turned into a number of different debates between ari, morris, and aaron. i don't remember too many of the details (adaptation vs. eternal sunshine? politically correct terms for the mentally disabled? the list goes on...) but it made for lively banter. for the most part i sat back and watched the whole thing unfold, taking sneaky pictures from table level (maybe this should be called a "beers-eye view").

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thanks for the encouraging comments regarding yesterday's post and 6 months of photoblogging. i do plan to keep it up for the forseeable future - its just too much fun. let me know if you have any suggestions for the site.

for those of you who haven't heard, my younger brother joel has been accepted to Roger Williams University up in rhode island. not only that, he also got into the tuition exchange program (TEP) which basically means he goes to a small liberal arts college for the same price he was previously going in-state to university of florida. i was digging around online the other day for info regarding the school, and came across this aerial photo of the campus. geez... rough life.

6 months of photos

its hard for me to believe it, but i've been doing this daily photo thing for right at 6 months now. and those of you who have been following along all this time may recognize this photo as the image that started it all. the initial entry is here, and gives some background as to the original project. i had no idea it would become such a regular thing, or something i thought about on such a daily basis. i've been really surprised at how much its challenged me as a photographer, and forced me to think much more visually about my days. i think i've expressed some of that feeling on here before, but looking back at 6 months of photos makes me realize how i've come to rely on this blog as a creative outlet, in addition to keeping track of the events of my life.

as far as the future is concerned, i expect i'll try to keep it up for at least another 6 months. (perhaps at that time i'll reevaluate and make changes?) at times its a bit of a pain and i wonder if i haven't created a monster, but it literally takes me less than 10 minutes a day to update, and i've grown to really enjoy the dialogue that various photos or comments instigate. so, keep up the input, and i'll keep up the photos. thanks for tuning in...

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tonight we're going to see the statement, which, according to metacritic may not amount to much. but its got michael caine, and sounds kind of interesting, so i'm up for it.

tim and ari were here for the weekend... more photos to follow.

homeoffice

this is where i work. i can't remember if i've pictured jeffrey's house on the blog before or not. as you might have guessed, this image has been altered a bit from its original. the more i fiddled with it, the better i liked it until it took on this surreal haunted-house-in-a-sunstorm feel. either way, this is what we'll be leaving behind come may 1 when we move down to the old st.elmo emporium. i have to admit i'll miss the old girl, with its faulty plumbing and excess of ladybugs; but especially the regular visits by the little cross kids. hopefully they'll still ride their bikes down to the new office every once in a while.

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what a strange week its been workwise. we've finally come down from the consistent level of insanity that we were functioning at for a good month, and i've got a chance to breathe. its a strange feeling though, not one i'm sure i like all that well to be honest.

friday-mp3-of-the-week: i know, i know, i already gave you the coolness of ratatat on wednesday, but there were far too many discoveries this week to pass up another musical missive. here's one, sovay, from andrew bird, an artist i discovered last year and whose CD is still on weekly rotation in my car.

flying bus

the other story i covered last weekend was the 6th annual bug-a-paluza put on by the scenic city volks folks. i wandered the camp jordan fairgrounds for maybe an hour snapping photos of volkswagen's of all shapes, sizes and ages. my favorite was a pair of magic buses with their doors flung wide, one of which is shown here. i had hoped to score some vintage VW wear or stickers for the passat, but was a little disappointed at the lack of cool stuff for sale. the volksfolks, evidently, are pretty focused on the just the vehicles themselves.

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tottenjam

another photo from john totten's birthday party last saturday. a couple of hours into the evening mr. totten, john and the twins' father, showed up for an impromptu jam session with his boys. as it turns out he's quite a musician himself, jamming out on the bass while david (foreground) played guitar with john on the drums. their covers of hendrix, the beatles, and others eventually turned into one long 70s-style rock-medley, with the occasional drum-and-bass rap from totten father and son.

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this morning i was reading a film review of the new tony scott film, man on fire, in the NY times and came across this pretty comical paragraph that i thought i'd share:

"Kill them all," Pita's mother hisses when she learns of Creasy's plan. In the same scene we learn that she has been reading his Bible, a book he consults and occasionally quotes, though it may be a different version than the one I'm familiar with. I've combed through both testaments, and I can't find the verse that seems to be Creasy's favorite — the one that says: if your enemy smites you on one cheek, rig a tube full of plastic explosive to his body, tie him to the hood of a car and light the fuse.

heheh. can't find that one myself either...

i know its not friday, but here's a musical recommendation nonetheless. i've been hearing little things here and there about this band ratatat for a couple months (i think pitchfork plugged them a while back?), and now they're the album of the week over at the morning news. check out the mini-review and the free mp3. just listening to it makes you feel kinda cool...

ari now has a blog... i think. and rumor has it she and tim are coming up for the weekend?

girlfight

this past weekend i covered a couple different stories for upcoming pulse stories, one of which was the Rough and Rowdy Brawl in east ridge, tn. (hmm... that reference should get me some interesting visitors from the search engines.) the website describes the event as:

Rough men and women weighing up to a whopping 400 lbs. step into the ring and put their hometown pride on the line and slug it out for trophies, championship jackets, and prize monies up to $5,000

and they weren't kidding... not about the rough women, the 400 pounds, or the excess of hometown pride at stake. i was able to work my way right up to the ringside, close enough to feel the breezes coming off missed punches, and close enough to get some pretty interesting photographs. you locals can watch for next week's Pulse to see more.

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the indie film for this week looked uninspiring so we all decided to head out to the cheap theatres to see mystic river (a second time for some of us). i know that i loved this film the first time i saw it in the theatres, but last night's viewing sealed it as one of my favorite films from last year. in the end, its perhaps not the most uplifting film, but the acting alone is enough to make me want to watch it over and over... oh, and yes, i must confess, if i could be any man other than myself i'd be sean penn. heck, i wish i was sean penn...

more birthdays

in looking over the last few months of blogging i'm realizing how much effort my friends and i put into celebrating birthdays. it seems most of the occasions for gathering a group together of late are driven by a desire to remember someone's birth. well, that or we're always on the lookout for a reason to party... either way, we celebrated john totten's 22nd this weekend, and i took way too many pictures. so many that i'm tempted to use them all week long, but i'll probably just end up tossing them in here and there. here's the birthday boy with his birthday "cake."

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kill bill 2 was fantastic. 2 thumbs up, and tarantino has effectively redeemed himself in my book. granted, its no pulp fiction or reservoir dogs, but it definitely brings some perspective to the first film and resurrects the wit and complexity that i've so enjoyed in his earlier films.

on sunday, the deMarcos and emily and i took the self-guided walking tour of downtown living that the downtown partnership puts on; and i am again reminded of the fact that i've been blogging for over a year.

bulb

on tuesday night my roommate brent returned from his annual family vacation in cancun. it was a rainy night when i picked him up at the chattanooga airport and as i was waiting in my car i started fiddling with some of the settings on my new camera. and i discovered that it has a "bulb" setting. what this basically means is that as long as you hold the shutter release button down, the shutter stays open, which can make for some pretty interesting photos. here's a first attempt.

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other stuff...

there's a pretty cool photo over on tenyearsofmylife.com today. wish i'd thought of something as creative on tax day.

kill bill 2 comes out today, and as disappointed as i was with part 1, i'm actually pretty eager to see this one. i guess i'm still hoping that tarantino will redeem himself and that what we saw before was merely an intro to something a bit more self-aware and dialogue driven. david denby, whom i often disagree calls it a "shapeless mess." elvis mitchell, on the other hand has this to say about tarantino and his film: "His movies are about loss and betrayal, and "Kill Bill Vol. 2" is a double-burger helping of those motifs. It is rich, substantial and sustained, yet also greasy kids' stuff, a wrapper filled with an extra large order of chili fries, stained with ketchup, salt and cheese."

and finally, the friday-mp3-of-the-week: aqualung's baby goodbye. i've been listening to this band for the last few weeks trying to decide what i think. this track is beautiful, and stands pretty well on its own. on the whole, they're certainly easy on the ears, and have a similar sound to some of coldplay's quieter songs. however, i'm not sure that they really have much staying power. from listening to clips of most of the songs on their new album, i wonder if wouldn't all start to run together after a few listenings. tell me what you think...

running at the powerlines

morris and i have begun running again over on the covenant cross-country trails. this puts us close to the strip of powerlines that cuts through covenant's property carrying power from one side of the mountain to the other. i've always thought the industrial look of the towers juxtaposed with the beauty of mountain was a little jarring, but at the same time, somehow aesthetically pleasing. perhaps its just the rust-colored metal up against a clear blue sky. either way, there's a wealth of photographs to be taken in these woods - i just hope morris doesn't get fed up waiting around for me.

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its tax day, hope everyone got finished or extended. its funny how many people i've talked to that have ended up over at H & R Block even after reading my posts about it. i guess its true what they say, "there's no such thing as bad publicity..."

coptix update: we're moving! at least, that's the plan for May 1. if any of you remember the old emporium coffee shop down in st.elmo, that's the building we'll be renting. its closer to downtown st.elmo, right behind the body shop to be exact. it'll be nice to be closer to restaurants and the other stores that have been opening up in the neighborhood. its a real shame the safari pub shut down...

finally, for those of you who haven't already "come across" a copy of the new wilco album, a ghost is born, you can now legally stream it from wilcoworld.net.

elf powered

the elf power show last night was no disappointment. i would say that it was well worth the $5 cover charge, but then, i was on assignment for the pulse and didn't have to pay the cover (thanks bill - i'll have those photos in later today). its also the first assignment i've covered with the new camera and, as i expected, digital is definitely the way to go when it comes to photojournalism. no trips to the camera shop, no waiting for development, no faxing receipts to clients. if i could quantify quality-of-life this thing would have itself paid for in no time.

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a couple things...

bush gave a press conference last night that was broadcast on public radio. (you can listen to it all here.) its his first in 13 months, and i can understand why. the media peppered him with difficult questions which he handled as best he could. i can't say that i was completely satisfied with his justifications and rationale for certain actions, but his candid nature is pretty disarming. i have to admit that it certainly makes me want to believe him, and regardless of whether he's delusional or not, he is convinced of what he believes and is unafraid to act on those beliefs.

a-year-ago-today: i recently realized that i've been blogging for over a year now. this is surprising to me, as i thought it might not last more than a few weeks. in honor of this fact, here's last year's april 14th entry.

the fog of alton park

yesterday on one of my numerous forays into alton park to get to H&RBlock i noticed this railroad scene off on a side street. i pulled off and spent a few minutes photographing it, feeling a bit anxious the whole time due to my "white guy with a camera driving a german car" persona.

one of the things i love about chattanooga, in terms of photography, is the abundance of railroads. yes, i know that railroads tend to be pretty cliche photographic subjects, but there's a reason for that and the fact that they've been photographed so much forces you to be more creative with your images. granted, this isn't the most interesting of images, but like i said, there wasn't a whole lot of standing around time.

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i don't really want to talk about it, but i'll just say that my taxes are done and the check is in the mail, so to speak. no wait, not so to speak, literally, its en route to uncle sam, all $928 of it.

saw the cooler last night, and i can't really say that i recommend it. i'm actually surprised that its managed to stay up around 65 on metacritic; i'd probably give it closer to a 50. something that i remembered right after we sat down was that originally it was supposed to get an NC-17 rating, but had been edited down to R before final release. what this means is that it has a couple, what i considered, completely gratuitous sex and violence scenes. in the end this captures the entire feel of the film to me. it appears to have been made by a couple young film school students armed with a handful of cliche themes and a strong desire to shock viewers into a reaction. at the same time there's not nearly enough character development to elicit any emotional involvment. 2 thumbs down.

birthday boy

we got down to atlanta saturday evening around 730 and met up with Tim and Ari for dinner at their favorite thai restaurant. after a long dinner, discussions on abortion, film, and redemption, and a surprise birthday dessert, we headed over to the hand in hand pub for a quick pint. they caught me up on the grad school discussion (still no final decision) and we all got free zippo lighters from the nice phillip morris lady. finally around 1am we hit the road back to chattavegas and mesh kept me awake on the ride home with selections from his seasonal mix cds.

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good news: lent is over! which, if you haven't been paying attention around here, means that i get to start buying music again. hmmm... what to buy first? perhaps some neutral milk hotel? or maybe the new calexico disc... oh yes, which reminds me that i forgot to do the friday-mp3-of-the-week. elf power is an elephant six collective band that's playing rhythm and brews tomorrow night. i don't know much about them but what i've heard is decent - check out this mp3 called 'never believe.'

bad news: i just got off the phone with the woman at the H & R Block office who informed me that if i swing by today we can finish everything up and she can give me my refund. this seems strange to me as the last i heard i was in the hole some $600, and had yet to finish calculating capital gains. unless they've discovered some gaping loophole in the tax structure, this only strengthens my suspicions of their incompetency and makes me more irritated at myself for ever going over there in the first place. oh well, live and learn. it shant happen again.

the taxman cometh

as most anyone who is gainfully employed, or gainfully UNemplyoyed as it were, is well aware, tax day is right around the corner. i've been putting off dealing with mine for weeks, not wanting to drop the $60 on tax software for my iBook (software selection, one of the few drawbacks of macs). finally yesterday i decided, for a mere $20 more, to just give all my paperwork to the friendly people over at H & R Block and let them deal with it. i thought, you know, i'll get a pretty big kickback this year... what's another $20 to me? well, as it turns out, uncle sam's getting a nice little kickback from me this year. evidently i'm filed incorrectly with my company somehow and not nearly enough taxes were deducted from my paychecks over the past year. this, of course, was fun while it lasted, but now i'm in the hole to the guv'na some $600, not to mention the capital gains taxes i've yet to finish tallying. suffice to say the unpleasant surprise i received this morning with the Block people ranks up there with the day i found out the passat has a junk title...

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on a better note, there's an outdoor good friday service this evening with Rock Creek Fellowship, complete with an easter baptism (who said presbyterians don't know how to have fun?). and tomorrow morris, mesh, and i are heading down to atlanta to celebrate tim's birthday. dinner, drinks, and celebration, no doubt, will be in order.

dirty mesh

"dirty mesh" is one of the many so-called terms of endearment that has been given to aaron mesh along the way and, while its not one of my favorites, (nor his, i suspect) in this case it is quite fitting. on saturday morning, josiah and i rolled up to st.elmo storage to help the martins move their stuff, and discovered mesh resting on the loading dock, as see here. i have to admit that between the shorts, red t-shirt, nappy blue NYPD hat (ever the patriot!), and the well developed mullet, that i didn't recognize him for a moment or two when we pulled in. i glanced at him and thought he was just some guy working at the loading dock. weird. (congrats mesh, i think this puts you a photo or two ahead of the competition...)

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from the things-i-wanna-plug department...
cannon and leah are pregnant! okay, so you may have already known this, but now i've got the pictures to prove it. (its a bit sobering to post these photos after yesterday's heated debates. kinda puts things in perspective, and gives good support to mesh's argument for education.) also, i've been meaning to plug this for a while, but cannon's film production company, barking dog productions, has a website that you should check out, along with this article in the newspaper about them.

also, over the weekend, john totten (if that is his real name) and i threw together a quick-and-dirty website for his band, the quiet ones. the entire new album is available there for download, so do check it out.

finally, regarding yesterday's abortion post. it's good to see everyone weighing in so vehemently. please keep at it. as i was explaining to mesh yesterday, this is, of course, why i surround myself with such smart people. i throw out the tough issues and you guys hash out the details...

goodnight moon

the last couple of nights we've had some very full moons, especially from my vantage point up on the mountain. this probably has something to do with the time of year or the spring solstice or somesuch that i'm woefully unaware of. either way, the immensity of it has been pretty arresting in my trips up and down the mountain the last few days and i keep intending to capture it with a zoom lens. it had waned (or is it waxed?) quite a bit by the time i got around to shooting it last night unfortunately, but you get the idea.

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tuesday night BS Hour has moved to parkway billiards, which i think is a pretty swell move. they've got guinness on tap for less, its fairly empty and quiet on tuesdays, and the musical selection is typically a pleasant trip through 60s and 70s rock and roll; anything from david bowie to marvin gaye...

and finally, i'm just gonna put this out there. it's an NYTimes editorial by nicholas kristof about abortion rights that i'm not really sure what i think about, but would love to hash it out in comments.

wardell at the vineyard

this is a shot from isaac and the totten brothers show on friday night at the vineyard. i'm still figuring out all the settings with the new camera, and i'm wondering if i could have improved the light quality for this photo. the lighting on the musicians was very red, but here it has an almost hellish feel to it.

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last night we saw crimson gold, the current film in the bijou film series, and i have to say i found it less than engaging. granted, the iranian films i've seen up to this point have all had a fairly slow paced, almost plodding feel to them, and crimson gold is no different. while i typically enjoy more slow paced films, in this case there just wasn't enough emotional involvement to go on. its largely a class struggle film, but i felt the tension was revealed in the first few minutes and then dragged out for an hour and a half.

in other news: today is my brother tim's birthday! those of you who know him might drop a line... a few of us are hoping to go spend an evening with him and ari down in atlanta this weekend to celebrate.

overlook

i got the new camera over the weekend, and took quite a lot of photographs with it. unfortunately i still haven't received the card reader which means i can't easily pull the images off the CF card. so, until it arrives (today hopefully) i'm still using backlog images. i think this is a photograph i took months ago one morning when leaving the mountain. you can see the blanket of clouds covering the valley at the bottom. the wind patterns hitting up against the mountain make for some pretty striking cloud shapes.

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isaac played the vineyard again on friday night. a good show, but the sound in that place is pretty disappointing. we really need a couple good music venues in this town. saturday i watched human nature, another gondry/kaufman (eternal sunshine) film, which was actually pretty interesting. nowhere near as good as ESotSM, but thought provoking for sure. saturday night luciano threw an engagement party for ben and anna. more pictures to follow from those events...

dueling banjos

last weekend totten and i worked on a piece for the pulse about a local music store. i took some 40-odd photographs for the story, some of which will come out with the story next week, but the rest of which will go up on here over the next few weeks. music stores, as i had suspected, are an art-photographers goldmine. there's no end to the interesting colors and shapes you come across, especially with the more hand-made instruments.

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okay, so i have to admit that i was completely taken in by the roe's april fool's day pregnancy shenanigans. however, i must say in my defense that i think its a pretty low blow to start april-foolery a day early. unbelievable stories are certainly not as suspect if they come on march 31 as opposed to april 1. either way, they got me...

another new addition to external monologue:
mp3 of the week: this week's mp3 comes from a band i just started following this past year called Calexico. its off their newest album Convict Pool which comes out april 6th, and its called Alone Again, Or and you can find it here.

self-portrait I

i've decided to start something new with the photoblog. actually, i've decided to start a few new things, but one of them is trying to do a self portrait on or around the first day of each month. yes, i realize that its a bit egocentric to put a picture of me up once a month, but thinking back on the last few years, i often wish that i had watched more closely the ways in which i've changed, even if its as simple as physical changes from month to month. i have to admit that the idea came partially from reading ten years of my life and particularly the photos he has on the about page, along with the daily photo project. as Matthew Haughey puts it, "I'll be posting a monthly photo of myself here, to track the cruel passage of time."

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in other news, the camera shipped.

today is april fool's day. anyone heard any good stories yet?