Earthquakes, Grandpas, and Walkers of the Night

After an evening of general debauchery, including a failed attempt at attending a sold out local indie show (My First Earthquake), and an exciting concert put on by an old Miami wordsmith with a steel guitar (Baby Gramps)[more on him later], we indulged in a little stop motion entertainment.

See it here:

Gorwalth and Heinsttën: Walkers of the Night

Note: The music you hear is Franck's Symphony in D minor. I heard it on 102.1 the other day and was inspired. You'll be sure to here it again in more of my works, it is the only classical piece I have truly enjoyed. In fact, I even called the station to find out what it was.

Note the controversy:

Wikipedia
Sitting in on a rehearsal under the baton of Jules Garcin, where the players were resistant and uncooperative, Conservatoire director Ambroise Thomas is supposed to have remarked in reaction to the second movement (and quoted by Vincent d'Indy, in his biography of Franck) "name a single symphony by Haydn or Beethoven that uses the English horn!" (This may well be apocryphal and used by d'Indy - who was firmly in the Franck camp - to mock the conservative Thomas, since Haydn had very famously used English horns in his own Symphony No. 22, "The Philosopher".)

Wild, I know!

(909)ASTRICK

Maybe you've heard about it. Maybe you haven't. Maybe you saw it on woodyjang.com and were kind of confused about it.

It? GOOGLE VOICE of course!! How awesome is this... Now, when I get voicemail, I can embed it into sites:

(it was not an incredibly successful test, but it's working wonderfully now...)

So try it out, give me a ring:

Forgot about Blingo? (firefox addon BONUS)

Hey!! Remember back in the day when Sammy Go won a $150 visa gift card? Well I have know idea why I stopped using blingo, but I sure have started again!!

For those who don't know, it is a search engine that (was powered google) is powered by yahoo (so you get all the same results) except each time you search, you could win a prize. A kid I know won $150... My mom won a movie ticket...Legit... Hella people win!!

Anyway- Ya'll should sign up here (because if you win, I also win!)

BONUS!!

I don't know about you, but when I want to search for something in google, here is my process:

⌘ + L (highlights address bar)
tab- (puts cursor in search bar)

This process takes me about a quarter of a second.

This means, in about a quarter second, you can enter for a chance to win fatty money, or movie tickets, or amazon gift cards, or whatever. Just add Blingo to you search engines.



It's true, the searches don't look like google searches, and they look worse than they did in 2006, but I still think it's worth it!

Film.

Here is how movies get chosen in my house:

We didn't watch movies for a long time because my parents were on a Boston Legal binge. 5 Seasons. James Spader. Candice Bergen. William Shatner. When it ended, my parents were jonesing so hard, they netflixed the cast and the result was a lot of ridiculous movies.


1. White Palace


A young, advertising big shot, James Spader, with a dead wife falls in love with a poor, middle aged, fast food worker, Susan Sarandon and he is embarrassed to introduce her to his shallow friends (Jason Alexander). Good thing she has an estranged fortune telling sister to give him advice! Ridiculous.

2. Pretty in Pink


Again, rich guy falls in love with unlikely poor girl. His friends (the Spaderman himself) is a huge ass. Side note, Sarah and Elana joined us.

3. Rich and Famous


One Smith college girl (our lady Candice) moves to California with a man who secretly loves the best friend who remains in New York and becomes a famous (but not rich writer). Candice gets jealous, writes a book and gets (rich and famous) but her life falls apart while her friends fetish for younger men spirals out of control until one of the men actually ends up with Candice's daughter (a young Meg Ryan). Somehow this movie was over 2 hours long...

While waiting for other netflix DVD's, we resort to my Dad's Frank Sinatra Box Set:

4. The Pride and the Passion


As someone on IMDB so eloquently put it: "Schlep that Cannon" Carey Grant is a British man, Frank Sinatra is a Spaniard and the two of them spend 2 hours trying to transport an enormous cannon from one part of Spain to another bickering over Sophia Loren all the while.

It has been a strange week...

Thank goodness we have had incredible popcorn! Yes, this is literally an ear of corn that you put in a paper bag into the microwave and it just pops like crazy. Check it out:

My mom accidentally took a video.

More Stop Motion / Experimentation with software

Using the time lapse feature on iStopMotion, I took a picture of myself sitting at my computer every second as I intermittently spoke to my parents, watched Transformers clips, read failbog and apparently, rubbed the hell out of my face...

The results- well, I can imagine if the music was different it would look really sad, but I am not into sadness...

Remember... were gearing up for an amazing stop motion movie...

i luv stop motion

"i luv stop motion"

-elefant-itis

Last night, Señor Hellakopter and I did a little experimentavizing of our own. I will post-it (pun obviously intended because otherwise it wouldn't have a link attached) as soon as I get my hands on the video. In the meantime, I thought I would get everyone geared up for the stop-motion epic that I am planning.

I dunno if I should call it a test or a preview really, but here is the short I just made: BugOnFace.

Lost

This isn't woodyjang.com... I'm not talking about Kate or Sawyer or that really fat dude... I'm talking about me!

The other day, when we were exploring the city I wandered off on my own and today when I checked what was on the camera, lo and behold, there was a whole video documenting a manhunt!

Thanks for worrying about me guys!! I put a little video together about it:

You can also see the raw footage here. In a lot of ways, it's better... I did a pretty bad job editing, though you might enjoy it.

AddOn-Fast Dial

I've always been jealous of WoodyJang.com's fonts and I really want to share on the digital front, so I've decided to give out the word on some sick Firefox add-ons when I feel like it.

This one, the first, is intended to convert those Safari users to Firefox so you can enjoy what is to come.


Safari's 'top sites' has been cited as the reason for keeping it, but Firefox (in addition to all its brilliance) has an alternative: Fast Dial. It essentially does the same thing, but it doesn't get rid of sites you use, just because you don't always use them. You can put your favorites on. Here is a screenshot from my own:



More Firefox addons on the way. Make the change.

Throat Singing

Sometimes when I am bored I like to make noises with my throat. These guys are better at it:

Saturday, Too Amazing.

Tomorrow must be the most amazing and bizarre Saturday in the course of history. Get to bed early tonight because tomorrow, starting at 9:30 are two events that I am still struggling to believe exist (and unfortunately will not be able to attend).

1. The David Clay Diamond Dash:

This is a city wide treasure hunt starting at Crissy Field where you receive your clues by text message. How you get around (bike, car, etc.) is up to you. Here's the thing, the prize is a $15,000 diamond ring by David Clay (who I am going to assume is a legit diamond guy, though I've never heard of him). Good Luck.


2. San Francisco Bicycle Music Festival

This one is a little more confusing, but my understanding of it is this. Everyone meets with their bike at Marx Meadows in GGP (at about 29th ave) and there is a bike powered stage with live music. Then everyone caravans to a different spot where they re-set up the pedal powered stage and play more music. This happens all day until you are at pier 7. and they use no gas or anything because it is all pedal powered.


I know picking which to do will be tough, but I hope you have fun whatever you do. I'll be working...

If you want the skinny on more events, check out my summer calendar. If you can't see events, email me for permission.

Getting Exercise: Cryptid Hunt

On June 7th, 2009, Ben, Claire and I participated in a little something called a cryptid hunt. It's sorta hard to explain, but essentially we spent an afternoon luring "cryptids" out of hiding. To lure them, you must move like them and each type of 'cryptid' moves a certain way. Here are some examples:

Ninja Rabbit- Crouch runs next to cars, hops on one foot between them.
WobbleLope- Spins around three times and then runs on the curb. If they fall off, they spin again.
MegaFlumen- Holds hands and slaloms between items.

Here are some videos and pictures:

Find more videos like this on CryptoZoo

Mega Flumen running. Notice Ben in the flannel next to me and Claire.

Find more videos like this on CryptoZoo

In this video, you hear me make a ridiculous noise as I drop kick in the air. Notice my Bode Pumas.

Pics:







Needless to say, it was a wild and crazy day.

Adios, Amigo, even more loneliness

In my whirlwind day of inspiration and creativity, I also made a movie. I was messing around with the guitar and realized that the noises I was making could be an incredible score, so I went ahead with it...

Adios, Amigo from Aaron Strick on Vimeo.

This post also begs the question: Vimeo or Youtube?

You can vote over in the poll section on the right!

Some People, More Loneliness

So today I had two different plans that both fell through, one being the supremely disappointing opportunity to conference bike. On top of this, my mother took the car. What does that leave me with? A POS Volvo that stalls on the most minor of hills and a guitar.

I was inspired. I wrote a song. It is mostly about how I will never be a great musician, but it is ironic, because it's a great song! Well maybe, that's for you to decide.

I messed up the words a little in the middle- but you get the point.

Here it is:

(also, this is the first video I've ever put on youtube!)

(and come to think of it, the only song I've ever written.)

Art Brut, lonely time.

Today, by myself, I went to the Art Brut show @ Amoeba. Aside from it being a great show- there was some ridiculous things I overheard:

"She's all up in your kool aid!"
-Thug looking Mexican dude.

"I hope they play the song I lost my virginity to!"
-Bearded dude with glasses.

The band: Three ugly British guys and one ugly British girl supporting the ugliest British guy (who looks like a young, fat Alfred Molina) who is the most brilliant song talker I have ever heard. So good, on the final song he wandered through the CD area just reading the names of some of the albums he saw to the rythm of the song and it sounded incredible. He even says:

"And yes, this is my singing voice / its not irony / and it's not rock and roll"

Why World: Aaroneous Was Reborn.

World: Aaroneous has been created anew for two major reasons:

1. It used to be a huge pain to create a post and after each post, it would take longer and longer to publish. This meant that the more I posted, the more I was discouraged to post. We all remember how I would post more and more and then would just sorta stop for a while. Hopefully that won't happen again.

2. I used to only be able to publish from my own computer. This hurt when I was in Europe, when I was out and about. No more.

All the fun stuff on AaronStrick.com is still there. The Calendar, the Galleries, the Donation page, and of course, RestauranTouring, but now World: Aaroneous is here. Enjoy.