Black Friday

As I was browsing the NYTimes this morning, I came across this appalling article:
Walmart Employee Trampled to Death

It makes you wonder what type of world we have bred in America. We are suppose to be the place where virtually limitless freedom and opportunity is available to everyone. We are suppose to be the showcase for a successful capitalist society with a free market that serves as the beating heart for the global economy. We are suppose to be the hands that help pick up the less fortunate and fight the injustice that seems to plague so many places around the world these days.

Instead, in recent times, it seems we are less known for being the land of opportunity and more known for being a place that condones a severely twisted system of values. Among other things, we've created this insane materialistic mindset that is fueled at it's core by intense greed. Our holiday season has already turned into a spectacle which is serving as a center stage showcase for how American culture is using a veil of delusion to suffocate all of us into a sense of euphoric consumptive submission. This greed apparently lead a mob of people to trample a poor minimum wage worker at a retail store just so they could get the cheapest price on the latest "Tickle me Elmo" doll or a shiny new flat screen TV. Is this what capitalism is all about? What good is a society that puts the value of some product above the value of human life?

We may be more sophisticated and live more comfortably than our neanderthal brethren from prehistoric times, but it appears that we haven't evolved quite as far as we like to think.

It's only two days after Thanksgiving and American greed can be found everywhere you look. It seems to be at the core of a deeply flawed society that, on average, has been living far beyond it's means for the last 20+ years.

The question is, are we too far gone to make it right? Have we been so caught up fearfully living inside our narrow minded bubbles of seclusion that we've forgotten how to be honest and caring human beings?

Indie Rock Report: Kid Dakota and The Evening Rig

This weekend I was out at the Uptown Bar catching a few bands on Friday night.  Two bands I highly recommend are:

Kid Dakota (Rock/Indie):

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=2881328

The Evening Rig (Rock/Country/Crunk):

http://www.myspace.com/theeveningrig

Both bands rocked the house, even though the Uptown Bar is a pretty horrible venue for live music.  But if you like good Indie rock, check these guys out live if you can.

Imitosis

I've been rather introspective lately so I thought I'd share some personal thoughts.  

I've been thinking a lot recently about relationships and trying to figure out what makes them work.  After all this thinking, I've come to really no conclusions except one.  This one conclusion is that trying to analyze and understand human behavior will drive you to the brink of insanity and lead you to no conclusions.

In the few longer relationships I've been in throughout the last couple of years, I've come to realize that each of these relationships has followed this odd pattern which resembles the highs and lows of taking a road trip.  But not just a normal road trip... a long, fun, and exciting road trip across the country which somehow ends tragically in a fiery collision between my vehicle and a very large semi truck.  

I've recently been having a set of reoccurring, oddly amusing dreams that deal with this metaphorical road trip.  I can't explain them in full detail, but they go a little something like this...

The excitement begins with the planning of the trip.  I've been waiting for the right opportunity and when it finally presents itself, I seize the moment.  When I first embark on the trip, the excitement builds.  I'm exploring different parts of the country and seeing things through a totally new perspective.  As the road trip goes on, the excitement starts to fade a little, but I'm still left with a tinge of exhilaration.  Because, let's face it, this road trip experience is way better than how things were before the trip.  If I'm feeling tired from driving, every now and again a song comes up on the radio that reenergizes me and brings me back into the moment.  All in all, the trip is going great.  I feel a strong sense of contentment about the trip.  Weeks, then months, go by and I slowly begin to make my way back home.  Just minutes away from my homecoming, Andrew Bird's "Imitosis" comes on the radio.  It's late and I'm driving the final mile before I make it back to my place of residence.  I pull up to a stop light, patiently wait my turn, then the light turns green.  I slowly inch into the intersection and then suddenly I'm blindsided by a semi truck whose driver couldn't make up his mind whether to stop or try and run the red light.  By the time he made a decision, it was too late.  I can feel my car spinning a few times and then roll over.  A few moments go by and suddenly everything goes black.  Then I wake up in my own bed and it's like the road trip never happened.  So I start planning it all over again.

Most of the metaphors in the dream are not lost on me.  But I'm still trying to sift through it all.  For the first time I'm actually tempted to buy one of those dream books that I've always mocked as ridiculous, just to see if I can analyze it on a deeper level.  I guess the moral of the dream is take your time and enjoy the road trip, because pretty much everything ends in a metaphorical "fiery crash".

Happy Sunday :-).

Post Secret Exhibit at Minneapolis Central Library

Found out this week that a Post Secret exhibit is on display at the Minneapolis Central Library (on the second floor) until the end of November. PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard. Then the secrets are posted online at http://postsecret.blogspot.com. Check it out. I promise it's worth it.

The Quest for Artistic Inspiration

As many of you who have seen my place may have observed, the walls of my apartment are somewhat bare when it comes to art. This is partly due to my minimilistic attitude, but also because I've been struggling to really find/create a good piece that will really work with everything else in the room. There is only one wall which I splurged on and had some cool poster prints wood mounted.

This weekend I finally found some inspiration and created my own piece which I thought I'd share. My best friend Chris happened to be in town this weekend as well and he offered some great suggestions and comments as I was going along. The general idea came from an illustration I found when browsing around Flickr.com. So I put my Photoshop skills to work and created this piece. The final product will contain the three prints below wood mounted on three blocks which measure 20 inches wide by 30 inches tall. Combined they will be 60 inches across.

Loft Assignment 1 - Gasoline List Free Form Writing

For our assignment last week we were instructed to do some free writing based off of a gasoline list of thing we enjoy, which we created in class last week. This class is about learning how to write a memoir and/or better non-fiction. We were told to pick two items from our gasoline list and write a two page story that ties them together. Here is my first stab at it. My two items that I decided to write about were travel and live music. It's unpolished, but free form writing is suppose to be.

Gasoline List Free Writing

Before going away to college, I never really had the desire to see the world or experience different cultures. Growing up in a small Indiana town nestled inside the shadow of a slowly dying steel industry didn't provide me with a very worldly upbringing. It instead lead me to be mostly apathetic and ignorant to the world beyond my small town until I headed away to college. However, my apathy for traveling was profoundly decimated my sophomore year when I began reading “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac. This one book opened my eyes to the America that I had never seen or experienced. Reading about the ideals that drove the “beat” generation ignited some dormant passion inside of me to explore everything that all these distant places had to offer. Since the fateful day I closed the frayed and torn pages of the “On the Road” book, which I borrowed from the University library, I've made it my mission to see as much of the world as I can. I love the sublime wave of adventure and freedom that washes over me as I'm shifting my car into reverse and pulling out of my stuffy garage before a long road trip to a destination I've never seen. Or the over joyous feeling of excitement and wonder as I board a flight to a country whose culture is completely different than my own. Traveling for me is about the journey. The journey that you take which could potentially change your perspective on the world and the people in your life. I feel like every place I have had the privilege of visiting has left a little piece of it's culture and history inside of me. Those piles of pieces help me to better understand this world and the people that live in it.

I recently took a trip to Germany that epitomizes everything I enjoy about traveling. One evening while wandering the streets of old town Dusseldorf, my travel companion and I came across a small hole in the wall bar called “Da Spiegel”. “Da Spiegel” was similar to a lot of dive bars in America except for the fact that they had an exceptional breadth of amazingly good German beer available on tap. Upon entering this fine establishment, I was overwhelmed by the shear number of people that managed to cram into this tiny multi level pub. The bar was packed to the brim with a variety of locals as well as tourists. On the first floor was an ornate mahogany wooden bar that spanned almost the entire length of the place. The smoked soaked walls were lined with random photographs and colorful paintings that showcased local artists and musicians. The second level was no larger than a city apartment. It had similar paintings as well as a smaller bar and a small wooden stage just above the stairwell. As we walked up the stairs to the second level, we were pleasantly surprised and excited to hear some great live rock and roll music being played by a local band from Dusseldorf. For as long as I can remember I've loved to watch and listen to live music. No matter what the genre of music may be, I've always been enamored by the visceral connection that a great live band can make with their audience. After listening to a few German rock songs and drinking several pints of a local Dusseldorf “Alt” beer, the band randomly broke into playing some American classic rock. So here I was, standing in the middle of the second floor at a German dive bar a few blocks away from the Rhine river listening to a spot on rendition of CCR's “Fortunate Son”. To my left were a group of asian tourists boisterously singing along and dancing what I can only describe as some type of mambo. To my right were a group of older german gentleman in sweaty de-shelved suits holding up their glasses of alt beer while doing some synchronized swaying as the drummer of the band rocked the bass drum louder and louder.

The band was connecting with everyone in the room and that's the moment you realize that despite all the cultural differences we may have between us, there are many more things that connect us together than drive us apart. That's one of the most important lessons I've learned in all my travels and I've found that live music is frequently the vehicle in which that lesson is conveyed. It's something I see continually over and over again no matter where my journey ends up taking me.

Loft Writing Class

A couple weeks ago I began a writing class at a local community writing school called The Loft. So far it's been a fun experience. Over the coming weeks I'll be posting all of my weekly assignments on here, so check back soon.