Google Maps Street View: The Movie
Posted by Mark Matcho at 2:53 am on June 6th
When I first moved to New York, some guy tried to tell me Houston Street was pronounced, "How-ston".
He musta thought I was a real rube, to fall for that one!
A little thing I put together in Flash, from a bunch of stills I screengrabbed using Google Maps' Street View feature. Orwellian Invasion of Privacy charges aside, I find the technology fascinating, and spent some time this weekend virtually revisiting some my old NYC haunts, in addition to checking out some spots I never managed to make it to, in the fourteen years I lived there.
I shoulda/coulda made some use of of the zoom/pan controls on offer to add some variety, but I'll save that stuff, along with some hilarious outtakes, deleted scenes and bloopers, for the sequel- Google Maps Street View II: Goin' All The Way!
The Marones!
Posted by Mark Matcho at 6:11 pm on February 2nd
Can't say I'd ever go with Bank Gothic again, if I could do it over, but Satan ain't particular about what fonts you use, when he's fittin to cast yo ass into that Lake Of Eternal Fire. No, sir.
I haven't seen anyone post anything on The Ramones lately, so I figgered I'd haul this antiquity outta the basement of my harddrive.
Poster I did about 12 years ago for my ol buddy Zombie's band, when they took the legendary Ramones out on tour with em as their opening act. Curiouser and curiouser...
Anyway, a fondest gabba gabba hey, to you and yours.
Inspired in part by a coupla Busby Berkeley movies I got into during some downtime after Xmas, and some addled, late-night notions I'd been having about minimalism and symmetry.
The title is after Erik Satie's 3 Gymnopedies, which I originally wanted to use as the soundtrack. I abandoned that idea after realizing I didn't have a hope in hell of figgering out how to sync the animation to it, and I ended up doing my own music bed in GarageBand, at a reliable and trustworthy 120 bpm.
Misfortune Cookies
Posted by Mark Matcho at 9:59 pm on July 29th
I had a brutal week- everything that could have gone badly, did- personally, professionally, and any other way you'd care to view it. Every idea got rejected, every final came back for revisions, my girl walked out, and it just seemed that I'd become some bizarre magnet for black-cloud activity.
I got some Chinese food Wednesday night and sat in the window of the restaurant, and reflected on the week. The waiter brought over the bill, along with a fortune cookie. When I cracked it open, the strip of paper inside read, YOU ARE SUCCESSFUL IN BUSINESS AND LOVE, and I thought, yeah, right, and came home and started thinking about fortunes of a bleaker nature.
Alotta guys are sneaky, that way.
I should have probably left some cookie crumbs in these pictures, but it was about 125 degrees in my little studio, and the cookie wouldn't really crumble- it just got kind of mushy. So there you have it.
My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts Turns 25
Posted by Mark Matcho at 2:48 am on July 25th
Photo by Brian Eno and David Byrne
Not much to say about this record, except that it was a.) a groundbreaking collaboration between David Byrne and Brian Eno, and b.) WAY ahead of it's time, and as far as electronic music goes, it pretty much influenced everything that followed it, either directly or indirectly.
Recorded without samplers, using found vocals from a variety of sources, it was released to little acclaim a year after Talking Heads' Fear of Music, and a year before Remain In Light, another watershed Byrne/Eno collaboration. Sometimes I forget just how goddam good Byrne's stuff was, before he lost me a few years later with his less-compelling forays into Brazilian and world music.
Here's the video for Mea Culpa, my favorite cut on the album. When you think about the big hits of 1981- REO Speedwagon's Keep On Loving You, Lionel Ritchie's Endless Love, Kenny Rogers' Lady, Journey's Don't Stop Believin'- it doesn't look or sound like it was produced on the same planet, much less the same year.
The Bush Of Ghosts site, where a feller can listen to, and remix some of the songs on this legendary album.
Delusions Of Grandeur
Posted by Mark Matcho at 11:29 pm on July 22nd
you got that right, pal.
The last coupla months, when I pass a blank wall or a billboard, I've started to to wonder what I would do, if somebody gave me that space to use. I started carrying a camera around in my backpack, and every so often I'll pull over and take a couple of shots if I'm out running errands, or whatever. Eventually I started adding my stuff over the pictures in Photoshop, just for the hell of it, and as an exercise in the general Photoshop cloning/omitting/layering departments I'd like to get better in.
drive in and save.
I rode past this place for years and years, and I'd always think, yeah, i gotta take a picture of that. By the time I actually got around to it, somebody had bought it, and put up a chain link fence around it. Just goes to show ya.
this innocent-looking building could very well be a haven for enemies of the state.
I don't know what this place used to be, but that's a pretty fine-lookin crown somebody picked out for it. I was taking some pictures here, and two guys in security outfits walked up and said HEY! WHAT ARE YOU TAKING PICTURES OF, and I said, uh, just this building, and they said, WHY? and I said, well, just for myself, and they both kind of looked at me for awhile and then one guy said, ...WELL... OK, and they turned around and walked away.
I don't like to brag, but this is the third-largest spot illustration research and development facility in the western hemisphere.
I did this one a few years back, but I'm reappropriating it for the purposes of this article.
There are bigger versions of these, and a couple more, in the Gallery.
From the Pages Of The Pasadena Bee
Posted by Mark Matcho at 11:50 pm on July 20th
I'd like to have an interesting explanation for my six-month absence from this wonderful site. Something involving an offshore oil rig, or a diplomatic mission on behalf of the Department Of Interior, or even fighting for our collective right to party.
The truth is, I just didn't have that much to say, and I spent the time slumming at the SternFanNetwork, until eventually getting booted off for making some unkind, uncalled-for remarks towards another member.
Bigmouth Strikes Again
Posted by Mark Matcho at 12:13 am on February 25th
I evidently got canned from a weekly job I'd been doing for a well-paying, but notoriously difficult-to-please client for the past six months or so. So lofty are their standards, in fact, that they provided the impetus for my Gallery Of Rejected Sketches, after passing on eight reasonably viable roughs I submitted for a 2" x 2" spot, a while back.
Four sketches into a job I'd been working on, they pulled the plug on the piece, which was fine- I was overbooked this week anyway, and was frankly relieved a.) not to have to continue to submit random, clueless sketches for a cryptic, two-line synopsis of a story, and b.) not to have to do the finish, which was due at about 8 the next morning. While this client pays nicely for a final, their kill fee rate is a miserly 30%, and at the end of a 16-hour day, I fired off a testy e-mail to the AD, along with a bill for 50%, and a paragraph explaining why I thought their 30% rate was for the birds, how 50% was industry standard, and that the actual "work" in working for them was just getting a sketch approved. Then I stumbled over to the couch for a few fitful hours of sleep.
I woke up, thought, uh oh, and tried to make nice with a clumsy, conciliatory follow-up which said, in effect "Hey, I was just kiddin, ha ha! 30% is fine. Uh, we're still cool, right?" They didn't respond to that e-mail, and Thursday came and went without a phone call, an assignment or any of the other things I'd come to associate with working for them.
So, I guess the moral of story is, don't fire off testy e-mails to ADs at the end of 16-hour days, decrying their policies. Had I the benefit of a couple hours of sleep in my skull, I just wouldn't have sent the e-mail at all, and I would've adhered to that age-old adage, The Customer Is Always Right, and gone about my bidness.
Well, I'm off to knock a couple back, and to think up new ways to burn bridges and alienate longstanding clients.
On Rejected Sketches
Posted by Mark Matcho at 6:04 am on February 18th
"Er, we won't be needing this one, thanks."
I never know why clients pick certain ideas over others. Sometimes they pass up some decent ones, though.
I always like to imagine that someday I'll arrive at the point where I can just dash off some e-mail that says, "Gentlemen: here is the sketch I'll be doing", and then I can fly to Bratislava or perhaps Contiki, have a spot of tea and write my memoirs, or stroll around in a smoking jacket and an ascot; aquire a collection of fine wristwatches.
In the meantime though, sometimes I'll pull one of the also-rans off the assembly line, set it aside and say, "I'm gonna do this one anyway, just for the hell of it", although I never actually do.
For the record, a more high-falutin Flash version of this sentiment can be found on my site, with the understanding that I'm defining "site" as a loosely-related framework of mostly non-functioning pages.
Tremble In Fear Before My Mighty Blogging Skills
Posted by Mark Matcho at 7:28 am on February 14th
Are you trembling yet? No? Well, that's because I haven't related my story of the grave insult I received at the hands of a callous Barista, yesterday. Or discussed, at length, the pros and cons of facial hair. Or bared my innermost thoughts on the subject of quality footwear.
I've studied with some of the top blogging masters the world over, and I swear to hold a nation spellbound, now that I've finally found the perfect forum through which to channel my Blog Fu. Oh yes: like it or not, soon the world will learn my strange and terrible secrets.
