Ok, not really… but it IS a good song… This is pretty much what the inside of my head sounds like head­ing to work in the morning…

Despite unre­lent­ing rain for the last few days, I’ve been in a pretty great mood lately, yes­ter­day espe­cially. But today, a warm, glo­ri­ous sunny day, I’m feel­ing blah–seems I’ve strained my upbeat muscle(s). So, I’m try­ing to perk up with music in the form of a fairly ridicu­lous and silly playlist this after­noon. Among the tracks is:

Lis­ten­ing to this sort of music makes me want to cook up a storm and host a mas­sive din­ner party for all the peo­ple from around the world whom I love. Imag­in­ing every­one in one place for once in my life is absurd and thrilling, but maybe some day, right? Per­haps for my next house warm­ing? Who’s in?

A brief video of the cur­rent instal­la­tion at the Bar­bi­can in Lon­don by French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot which explores the unex­pected rhythms of daily life.

So it’s Valen­tines Day, for those who cel­e­brate the occasion…

Can’t say I’m the biggest roman­tic– I grav­i­tate towards the Baude­laire and Poe end of the spec­trum ver­sus the Keats and Byron end. Even so I enjoy thought­ful obser­vances of the day whether expe­ri­enced first hand or not–it is a shame really that we need a sched­uled hol­i­day to get us to artic­u­late our affec­tions but what­ever works, right?

For those who pre­fer the greyer end of the spec­trum, here are few tunes for you:

This video was made by a fan after Mark Sand­man’s death but it’s a good song, imho.

So dear read­ers, how do you observe this spe­cial day?

Gen­er­ally I try and avoid brief posts about ran­dom nov­el­ties, but this is just too cool to pass up. Peo­ple, have you seen the Tone­Ma­trix? Seri­ously, this is such a neat appli­ca­tion– sim­ple, ele­gant and just plain fun!

It has always fas­ci­nated me how seem­ingly triv­ial things can trig­ger one’s mem­ory on a dime and trans­port you to another time or place in an instant– hid­den snap­shots of one’s life pep­pered through­out our daily com­ings and goings.

This morn­ing, pay­ing bills at my desk and watch­ing the rain pour down, iTunes sur­prised me with a mem­ory jolt– a musi­cal time machine back to col­lege:

This song always pro­pels me back in time to a rainy night in Pitts­burgh– bib­li­cal rain, soak­ing you to the bone and wait­ing on Car­son Street for the 54C back to Oak­land. The expe­ri­ence or night holds no sig­nif­i­cance to my present life, no new char­ac­ters came into my life that night, no pro­found obser­va­tions were made on that day, the rain did not cat­alyze any­thing other than hail­ing a taxi and yet it remains as a warm and vivid mem­ory: Crum­pled up in an old leather jacket, wait­ing beneath a street light flip­ping through sketch­books with the other reg­u­lar from my cof­feeshop (who was also wait­ing for the over­due bus), wet licorice streets, head­lights exag­ger­ated by raindrops…

It seems strange to me that such an insignif­i­cant moment in my life remains so firmly imprinted upon my mem­ory and yet it does.

What ran­dom moments are firmly implanted in your mem­ory, dear readers?

It’s just one of those days; we all have them– you wake up and the world feels grey and unwel­com­ing. You scuff around and feel sorry for your­self and maybe mope a lit­tle. Well today, I’m hav­ing one of those days.

BUT instead of mop­ing about like a fool when I feel like this, I rally my inner troops and forge ahead. This gen­er­ally involves a longer visit to the closet– pulling out espe­cially fun shoes and a col­or­ful jacket, a big­ger than usual cup of cof­fee, a longer lunch break and a tight­en­ing of the cir­cle of dear­est friends. When the world feels unwel­com­ing, I find it best to sim­ply become the ulti­mate host­ess– wel­come the unwel­com­ing and just out­shine the grey.

One of my longest stand­ing friends from child­hood, loved the Bea­t­les when we were kids; count­less week­end hours swam by to the sound­track of the fab four and today my mind has drifted back to those days:

Watch­ing this clip from the movie Help!, the semi-sad lyrics of the song mixed with the sub­tle silli­ness of Paul and George perks me up and makes me smile.

How about you, dear read­ers? How do you perk your­self up when you’re feel­ing down?

This morn­ing, I was not feel­ing ter­ri­bly moti­vated– it has been a bit­terly cold, WINDY win­ter day in Charm City and my inner bear just wants to hiber­nate this time of year. But I’ve kept my favorite mug full of fresh cof­fee and even went so far as to pull together a playlist to keep myself moti­vated. If your moti­va­tion is wan­ing or you just need some new music, you can find most of my playlist avail­able through iTunes as an iMix here.

How do you stay moti­vated and pro­duc­tive at work, dear readers?

It’s been a quiet week­end around the stu­dio, draw­ing mostly; but for some, it’s been quite a busy week. Released this past Fri­day, Leigh Delamere is the sec­ond video from Under­pass’ debut album put out by Urban Plan­ning Records:

A visual con­trast to the first video from the album, which explores the urban Cardiff nightscape, this video takes us through the more organic side of Under­pass’ world. It’s been hard not to watch this repeat­edly as a visual break from my own work; even so, I’ve had the song stuck in my head all weekend.

Ok, so this is how hip hop sounds in my head:

Seri­ously. There are not enough pos­i­tive adjec­tives to describe how much I love this video– it has help mend my awful, bad day by mak­ing it a lit­tle bet­ter. The his­tory of hip hop in five min­utes of “chap hop” with a ban­jolele? Yes please!

What videos have made your day lately, dear readers?

Recently, I’ve been on the prowl for new music. An odd side tan­gent to this exer­cise, has been an ongo­ing game with an old friend from col­lege wherein he quotes a song lyric, and I’m sup­posed to pick-up the song from that line or two. It’s fun, but what’s fun­nier is that we spent years together as col­leagues, lost touch after school but stayed friends like every­one from our under­grad­u­ate stu­dio group (a group of peo­ple who are more fam­ily than just a bunch of kids in a work room) and have never really talked much since school. Now all these years later we’re trad­ing lyrics, songs and mixes.

In my semi-High Fidelity state of mind, weav­ing musi­cal mixes in the back of my head, I’m left won­der­ing what untasted sound morsels (or bites if you pre­fer puns) are out there– what am I miss­ing? Tell me, dear read­ers, what sort of music have you been lis­ten­ing to lately? What are your favorite finds of the past year? And what are your obscure favorites?

This was stuck in my head while work­ing on the most recent daily por­trait, Maybe Spar­row by Neko Case. The video was done by Julie and Paul Morstad.

.…Brush your hair back from your eyes.
Take you down let the river flow…

This song always reminds me of stand­ing in the pour­ing rain under a street­lamp wait­ing for the 54C.