Eric Hart is the awesomest photographer ever. I'm not saying that Eric's photography is necessarily awesome. In other words, he's a photographer, and he also happens to be incredibly awesome.

2.28.2005

He works in mysterious ways

My softball team wanted to thank God for being with us. I felt awkward because I knew God was spending the day at the mall after telling everyone he was sick.

God's Gifts

My friend just got a new kidney. Today in church, he stood up to publicly thank God for his gifts. I felt awkward because I knew that was the same kidney that Debbie had just given God for his birthday.

Atheism

My roommate told me today that he doesn't believe in God. I felt really awkward since God was standing right there, and I think he heard what my roommate said.

The Oscars

I watched the Oscars tonite. I was wearing jeans by Levi and shirt by Gap. My shoes were by Timberland. I lost some money on the Oscars because I couldn't cover the spread in the Best Picture category. This is my second Oscar-viewing, and I have tried to watch them five times before. They should give out certificates of participation to all the contestants just to be fair. I can't believe who was voted off this week. I didn't want to compete with all the Oscar-viewing parties tonite, so I'll be throwing one next week. I didn't keep track of who won, so if anyone asks, I'll just make it up; that would have exactly the same amount of relevance on that person's life. I couldn't believe Hilary Swank won for Best Actress; I thought she was a boy. I won't give away the rest of the winners for those people who haven't seen tonite's episode yet. But I think you'll be surprised at who wins Best Best Boy. If God won an Oscar, he'd thank me for all my help; after all, I optioned his first screenplay when all the studios passed.

2.27.2005

Three things of unnote

Here's how to get your book, cd, or dvd on Amazon, Terry.

You know what sucks? Myspace doesn't have RSS feeds for their blogs. How can you have a blog without an RSS feed? What is this, 2003? Do you think you're Tucker Max?

Seems my photo of a Bulldozer (which I call a tractor) is my most popular photo at Flickr. Where all my other photos have around 5-15 views, and this one has over 250. The only thing that seems to set it apart is that "tractor" is one of its "tags" (Flickr's term for searchable keyword). So despite the fact that everyone on the cutting edge of the internet acts all cool and hip, really, they're all just looking for pictures of tractors.

The Haunting


The Haunting
Originally uploaded by eqqman.
Ray never thought our house was scary until I took this photo of it. Now she'll never want to go outside at night again... or inside! Ha ha ha ha!

Den of the Crazytigerrabbitman: Sympathy Dating 101

Den of the Crazytigerrabbitman: Sympathy Dating 101
Man what a chump. Did you read this? This guy would make Ross Jeffries proud - as the "Before" guy. I met the Before guy once. I asked him what his problem was. He kept using Leading Brand products. Everyone knows Leading Brand is only second best at its best. Anything can verse Leading Brand and win. Leading Brand is the Maddox to everything else's Tucker Max.
Now the Superficial. That's funny. Kate Bosworth is Hungry and other important news items.
Hey Terry, you should update your blog more than once a year. Bitch

2.26.2005

Catch Me if You Can

There's an article I found called "Catch Me If You Can, Auto Focus, Far From Heaven and the Art of Retro Title Sequences." It was designed by Olivier Kuntzel and Florence Deygas for Nexus Productions. The article compares the titles to "Depatie-Freleng's celebrated animations for the Pink Panther films as well as more general design trends of 1960s titling such as the work of Saul Bass." Unfortunately, the Saul Bass site uses a bad flash interface. Which really is a redundant phrase. "The Saul Bass site uses a flash interface" would be just as accurate. But it does point to later art and artists inspired by the Bass-master - eg, the Clockers poster, Idle Hands poster, the Tindersticks album covers.
Yet none of them seem to have any stylized women.
Obviously your job is to look at these and tell me which ones inspire you and things you like about certain ones.

Snowy Road


Snowy Road
Originally uploaded by eqqman.
I shot this photo this morning whilst out on a walk with my folks. Then preceded to waste the entire day listening to dad blab about nothing after trying to do some work for him. I'm offering to do work and he's wasting my time blabbing about all the things we can do. Nothing! So instead of waking up at 3 and doing a little work, I woke up at 8 and did a little work around 3. Loser.

2.25.2005

Scariest Movies Ever

I've spent too much time and money trying to find the scariest movies ever. And then I find out there are already a bunch of lists around, like this one from Entertainment Weekly. It has most of the safe ones that appear in everyone's best of list, like the Exorcist, and Psycho. It's kind of like saying Citizen Kane is the greatest movie ever; after enough people in Hollywood repeat it ad nauseum, we just learn to accept it as fact. "The Exorcist is the scariest movie ever." Why? Because a list told us so? There are plenty of people making their own lists, with most of them existing just to list movies that are the opposite of the industry faves - cheap and bloody.
But what about damn good scary movies, the kind you have to watch through a hole in your blanket? The ones where watching it in the reflection of a mirror seems safer than looking at it straight on? Where you instinctively lift your feet on the couch because you're worried something might be waiting to grab them underneath? There's a good list of the 100 scariest movie moments of all time at retroCrush, and a completely different, but similarly titled list from Bravo, which get closer to the heart of the matter. But for a movie to be truly scary, it needs to have an effect on you which grows throughout the entire film, until by the end, you're just completely freaked out and can barely sip your milk.
One film which does this extremely well is The Haunting. I mean the original, not that Catherine Zeta-Jones travesty. With its incredible atmosphere and effective visuals, it manages to instill fear without actually showing anything. Everytime I watch this, I wet my bed retroactively.
Number two, in no particular order, would be Rosemary's Baby. Again, without anything being made explicit, it still manages to create this horrible feeling that something is incredibly wrong, even before the nosy old people show up. The whole film is an exercise in paranoia surrounded by what should be the complete mundane.
In the Mouth of Madness is much more visually a horror movie. John Carpenter seems to be some kind of horror genius with the unfortunate affinity for cheap rubber monsters. Yet in spite of this, or maybe because of it, his movies are genuinely scary. Except for They Live which was total crap. Ok, he actually has more crappy movies than he has good ones. But this one is good. When he hits the kid with the old man mask on the bike in the dark, I can literally smell my own fear. It's like the Eqq Theory song says, "Old bald midgets on bikes are spooky."
There it is, my top three. I've never actually seen the Exorcist, even though I own it, which sounds dumb. So the only reason I can't comment on it is from my own sheer laziness. Laziness of the worst kind - too lazy to watch TV. Now that's lazy. Coming up next week - the Laziest Movies of All Time.

weather

It snowed today. A lot. Of course, if you lived around here, you would know that. And if you lived somewhere else, then you wouldn't care. Weather... what a selfish thing to talk about.

2.23.2005

that's gold, terry. gold!

Why don't I ever talk? Cause everything that comes out of my mouth is gold, and I don't want people stealing my ideas.

i think this post is about me seeing garden state

i just saw garden state for the first time this weekend. i liked it, and it reminded me of a foreign film for some reason. it's hard to explain why, exactly, sort of this mix of the composition of the shots, the timing of the cuts, the way sound is used, pretty much the way the whole film is assembled - the germans have a word describing the effect of the sum of all the parts of a creative work, but i dont know what that word is, cause it's really long and in german, so i wasn't even going to mention it, but i guess it's too late for that now - reminded me of a foreign film.
i like foreign films. there isn't one that i haven't been able to fall asleep during. some of them, i've managed to fall asleep to during the opening credits and sleep straight through to the end. i must have watched 'wings of desire' almost a dozen times by now - i even own it - and there are still large chunks of that movie which i've never actually seen. but i love it.
it makes me wonder why american movies are so different than foreign movies, and what it is that i actually like about them. after all, foreign isn't a country. theres no reason they should all have the same effect. but theres something in their, whatever that german word is, that sets them apart. one of the only genres that america really excels at is the action movie. im talking about the balls to the wall, die hard kind of action movie. like 'die hard'. isnt that funny. guns and car chases and rock em sock em robots. sure, china has their kung fu movies, but kung fu is a subset of the action genre. if you have see a straight up action flick made in china, you mostly spend the whole time wondering why all those chinese guys are using guns when they could just break out the karate. i know, that's such a cultural misconception. not every chinese guy knows karate.
but its that straight up 'couldnt care less' kind of attitude that american action movie heroes has that makes it a good action movie. asian heroes always have that honor or tradition holding them back; if you had a japanese guy acting like bruce willis in die hard, you'd think he wasn't raised right; yet for some reason, to have bruce willis act like that, it makes you think that he was.
so maybe america is good at making action movies, and the rest of the world is good at making every other kind of movie. or maybe its cause we only see the best of foreign films that come out, since they need to become hits in their own country first before being picked up by distributers, whereas here we gotta watch every piece of crap that comes out. right, tim?

my show

you know how many times i've been told my show is too hot for tv? never! i don't even have a show you dumbass! and if i did, it wouldn't be too hot for anything. i might think it was when i first make it, but the producer would look at it and it wouldn't even bat his eyes. and i'd ask him if he's not worried about getting it past the censors. and he'd tell me it's alright while secretly wondering what i could possibly put in a show about making ceramics that would make it too hot. and i'd say 'the inside of a kiln!' and he'd freak out cause i just read his mind, and then disappear cause he's not real.

new cartoon

i figured i'd go check out "strindberg and helium," which the guys at boingboing promised was funny. the premise sounded promising; short cartoons featuring august strindberg and a little floating balloon. not that i ever could ever finish 'the father' or 'dream play,' but i knew from my theatre classes that he was a playwright and those were plays that he had written, and that they were performed at some time or other, i think in days of yore. imagine my surprise when i watched one of these internet cartoons and it wasn't funny.
ok, i guess im old enough to realize that theres no such thing as a funny internet cartoon. they all reek of that same something crappy. maybe homestarrunner is funny, and by homestar runner, i really mean strongbad. it reeks of that internet cartooniness, but you can forgive it since it's actually funny, and not just some drunk's idea of 'clever.' strindberg, like pretty much any internet cartoon suffers from the barroom syndrome of 'you know what would be funny' becomes a horrible reality. family guy is the only place to deal with this correctly. their asides are one joke based around some strange scenario, often referencing something incredibly obtuse or esoteric. the saving grace is that they last for about 5-10 seconds; they give the one possible punchline to this kind of joke and move on with the rest of the episode. for some reason, internet cartoon makers think that a joke with only one punchline can be repeated and somehow have a different effect.
i was gonna give a list of examples of all these cartoons, but i've already wasted enough of my life watching them the first time around, and don't want to spend time tracking them down, and they don't deserve to be linked to anyway. do your own damn research

2.19.2005

family guy

hey, has anyone seen that episode of family guy where peter does the opening credits from pee wees playhouse? it's hilarious!

personality quiz

here's a little personality quiz for you

first pick a color. then pick a number from one through ten.

ready?

ok, seth, here we go.

if you picked black, then you think you're cool, but you're not.
if you picked any other color, than you're gay.

now the numbers.

if you picked an even number, it means you're weak.
if you picked an odd number, then you're crazy.
and weak
if you picked pi than you're a bigger geek than i thought, cause that joke is so old.
if you picked any other abnormal number, like 2.5 or 5pi or i than you're even less funny and slightly retarded. besides, i is less than 1, dumbass.

now send this to 12 friends for good luck. since you don't have that many friends, you can also send this to email addresses which appear on all those forwards you get from todd the accountant.

rumble of the century

it was the rumble of the century. in the basement of an old church in stone valley, the greatest heros and villains assembled for the biggest organized brawl in history. opened only to the select few by invitation, closed off to the public and the law, steeped in secrecy, overflowing with history, they arrived.
first off was quotong who versus a pair of martian lietenants. eqqman placed dime and a trombone on the underdog who, with 17 to 1 odds against him. quotong who used his kung fu magic to pulverize the two martians in under three rounds. next up was jungle joe versus the horror of the hood, dr horseplay. seth knew the odds were against him, but he hocked his bass to place 5k on the jugular jammer, who pulled out from a four round funk for a tko in the fifth.
the crowd hushed as gringard entered and took his seat in the imperial box. even he wouldn't miss the next match, the quintessential captain john traver versus grignard's latest robotic creation, a cross between automatic weapons and a souped up playstation. the mechanical monstrosity had qt on the ropes for rounds one two and three. aaron white bet his immortal soul against the spaceship of a kree. it was gonna be a tough match. suddenly, someone shouted from the crowd yelled "attack!" johnny snapped his pelvis back into place and took up to the cry. no one ever found out who shouted those words of justice, but no one would ever forget the look in john t's eyes as he took charge of that fight, proving once and again why he will be now and forever known as the man of steel. the ropes could not hold that memorable bout, the captain kicked that robot's ass right through the walls of the basement. the dust settled as the robot landed right in the middle of the dancing girl's practice. with jill leading they never skipped a beat, dancing right around the automaton's broken body keeping beat with the brass boy's funky tunes. the crowd momentarily memorized by their hipnotic hip shaking, all it took was johnny t's pulverizing punches to bring their attention back to the fight at hand. with mear seconds left in the forth and whiteboy's soul on the land, capt john traver dealt a fatal blow that shook the church to its rafters and woke the old ladies upstairs.
"be quiet down there!"
god shouted from the bathroom, "shut your mouth you old bags! it sounds better downstairs!"
with that their was only bout left, the title match to end all title matches, the heavyweight of heavyweights, the match that would cause mike tyson to run crying to his high chair. in one corner stood the emperor of empirical hate, the grinning godawful grignard. the martians cheered their hero and the bets came in faster than todd can keep track with his magic accounting machine. in the other corner stood a dark figure shrouded in secrecy and cape. and then the spotlights flickered on, the pyrotechnics exploded, and the video screen above erupted into the magnificent visage of the one and only galactic boy! his big boots gleamed, his red cape fluttered even in the absence of wind, his shiny silver hat blinded all who looked upon it. the eager martian gamblers suddenly felt their nuts drop all the way to their chins. eqqman, seth, and aaron pooled their resources and bet nothing less than the immortal soul of god himself on this match. surely no mortal has ever witnessed what was about to occur, and all in the room realized they were watching not only history, but all of time itself.
the bell rung.
the first three hundred rounds left the church and seven of the planets in utter ruin, but no victor could be claimed yet. five millenia passed as the blows were traded back and forth, the sun was blotted dark from the shock waves of the punches and parries occurring. soon, time itself took a step back and placed a kilo of coke as a wager on the fight. naught was left but for the valley of stone where the fight raged on. seth had to go back to school, but he came back on winter break. he was gonna come back on thanksgiving break, but we didn't have his current phone number. round four hundred thousand was but a memory as round four million came and went. eqqman was reincarnated as eggman, then parthalan, and finally rereincarnated as the eqqman again. aaron's mom called and told him to come home. the fight was moved to andromeda as the milky way was left in ruins, with nothing but a river of blood from the two valiant fighters left as a reminder of what had passed there.
finally, in round infinity, grignard began to feel the effects of the pain brought on by the mighty galactic boy. he began to see stars, but they were but in his imagination, as all the real stars had ceased to burn in this universe. with his last ounce of consciousness, he could do nothing as the double image of galactic boy's fist raced toward his face. with that final fatal blow, grignard fell to the floor of the mat. his fall spanned eons. his body fell through time and space, through the nine gates of the phi gods. they watched on as his body fell through quantum space, through hyperspace, and even through inner space where it was seen briefly by the three people that saw that movie. over the skies of ancient rome, the parthalans watched the body fall. the legends of the mozambiques, the aztecs, the yanomamo, and neanderthal all share the myth of grignard's body falling from the heavens above to the site currently known as strawberry square in harrisburg. even today, we still commerate his fall in that glorious fight with an annual reenactment, except we replace grignard with a neon strawberry. and terry only wanted to find chicks for seth, not for himself. just for seth!

2.18.2005

Salem Church


Salem Church
Originally uploaded by eqqman.
Here is one of my latest photos, shot the other day. It was blogged on my last blog, but my new blog can integrate with Flickr's blogging feature, so I decided to test it by blogging this photo to my blog from Flickr.

I'm awesome

This is my new blog. It's going to be exactly the same as my old blog. Except there's comments. Maybe I can republish all my old blog stuff, but fix them up until they're funny. Or maybe just publish on a more regular basis. Hey Terry, Blogger let's you do team blogs. Eh? Maybe we can do that, bitch.

 
Name:
Location: New York, NY, United States

I'm a props carpenter and a photographer