Goodbye, Blogger.

I'm kind of over this blogging format and the tiny images it requires.


In the future, I'll be posting at http://srohlfs.tumblr.com/, so be sure to check that out. It looks like nothing at the moment, but I'm leaping before I blog.

Tilt-Shift Photography added to must-learn list.

Somebody needs to teach me how to do Tilt-shift photography.I very much desire to simulate miniatures. I've really got to get going on getting myself a fancy digital SLR to play with. Or a motorcycle. Or an MFA. If only I could plant a money bush. Teach me how, Ngugi wa'Thiong'o!

Oh, and please check out Kris Atomic, the source of the lovely image above (and many others, as well as a delightful illustration of "Chronic Bitch Face, a disease from which I believe I suffer.) I try not to include girly things in this blog because it's absolutely besides the point, but I like them and it's my blog, damn it. Get your own.

Another from the road trip.

Open Studios 2011 at The Hive

Open Studios are coming up at The Hive.
I'm sure all 15,000 of you blog readers (hi, mom) will be attending.

The Hive is opening its doors as part of the East Bay Open Studios event put on each year by the Pro Arts Gallery here in Oakland. They're promoting the event as including over 400 artists in 14 cities in the East Bay, though I suspect Oakland and Berkeley will be the best represented.

So put on your walking shoes (who am I kidding, I know you'll be driving. It's California...) and get ready to eat terrible snacks and see some wonderful art. I'm already starting to tidy up for you.

Another from the road trip.

From last summer's road trip.

Jon Rafman

Thanks to the awesome folks at Fecal Face for the heads up on Jon Rafman's amazing screen captures from Google Earth. See them here, they're truly spectacular.

Discovering what I've already discovered

Oh, the unpredictable joys of iTunes shuffle.

When it's not unearthing various attempts to learn languages (Ni hao, podcast! Wie geht's? Molto bene, grazie.) it's digging up things that I honestly cannot trace. It's like a trip in a time machine to an unexplained and decontextualized pre-Stephanie-Stephanie. And as much as I hate the self-congratulating hipster/artist "look how obscure my musical tastes are" post...

Look how obscure my musical tastes are! Oh, my god, I'm so "alt." In fact, I'm so alt, I've started saying alt again, so eat my shorts. What follows are some of the more random of my randoms.

Abrew's Portuguese Instrumental Trio - "Cabo Verdranos Peca Nove"
Agnes Buen Garnas & Jan Garbarek - "Lillebror Og Storebror"
Amber - "This is Your Night" (haha)
Arto Lindsay - "Prefeelings"
Bembeya Jazz National - "Whiskey Soda"
Billy Joel - "The Downeaster Alexa"
Blondie - "Sunday Girl" (in French)
Bobby Conn - "Never Get Ahead" (video is kid-friendly chica-go-go version)
Chingy - "Right Thurr Remix ft. JD"
Clyde McPhatter - "Lover Please"
Coven - "One Tin Soldier"
David Bowie - "Segue: Ramona A. Stone/I Am With Name" (This song is crazy as hell.)
Die Antwoord - "Jou Ma Se Poes In'N FishPaste Jar"
Dolly Parton - "Daddy Come and Get Me"
Dr. John - I Walk on Gilded Splinters (quite possibly the best lighting storm and cigarettes song)
Heavy Metal Kids - "Jackie the Lad"
Ini Kamoze - "Hot Steppa"
The Ink Spots - "If I Didn't Care"
Joe Diffie - "Leroy the Redneck Reindeer"
Lenka - "Gravity Rides Everything"
Leonard Nimoy - "Ruby"
The Loniest Monk - "You Don't Have To Try"
Marlene Dietrich - "Ja, So Bin Ich"
Marvin Pontiac - "Arms and Legs"
Memphis Jug Band - "Rukus Juice and Chitlin'"
Public Enemy - "Cold Lampin' with Flavor"
Rudi Schuricke - "Capri Fischer"
Vince Giordano and His Nighthawks Orchestra - "Hurricane"
Violetta Villas - "Dla ciebie mamo"


And because it's so great, here's a bonus video of Bembeya Jazz National's "Whiskey Soda." Learn it. Live it. Love it.




As a footnote, screw you, ItUNES, for your expert marketing that makes me capitalize your brand name as you have irrationally decreed it be capitalized. sCRew yoU.

English-ish-ish.

Tonight I am obsessed with what English, specifically American English, sounds like to the billions of people around the world who must, at times, feel that they are drowning in a sea of foreign sounds. We'll start off slow.



Yes, it's "Ken Lee". Deal with it.

Somewhat less known, though apparently a mini-meme in its own right, is Adriano Celentano's "Prisencolinensinaincuisol", an Italian pop song from the early 70's. Ostensibly written to mimic American English, the song is pure jibberish and yet rather convincingly apes English pheonetics.



Here it is, sung by a Bulgarian Valentin Asenov, passed through a terrifying late '80s / early '90s filter, complete with "fly girls" and a saxophone solo.




Here's a link to a somewhat befuddled Will Smith confronting Prisencolinensinaincuisol on Italian TV in 2005.

Will Smith: "Was that supposed to be English?"
Italian TV Man: "Yes, certo. Certo, Inglese."

The announcer/host is most definitely joking, but he does display some pride at the wit of his musically comedic countryman. Also most definitely comedy is the following clip from the Swedish television show Grotesco. It's not only filled with pseudo English, but uses some of our many, many television cliches to make its point. The black man falsely accused of a crime in the south, the "old boy" corrupt government official, the old southern man in a white suit... The Grotesco parody suffers from its creators obvious grasp of the English language, the words too often drifting from fake into silly English. It's mentionable, however, for quotes like the following:

"They say a man can walk a thousand miles and still don't know his butt from his behind. Well, I say a man can walk two yards and found the crowmacrew. That's a frewf."



I am reminded of a story an ex-boyfriend relayed of a conversation he had with a European tourist when we were both living in Rome as students. My ex asked the man what he though English sounded like as a non-native speaker, and he made a series of smacking, open-mouthed chewing sounds.

A.M.

Heading to work earlier than usual, I am struck by the fog of a San Francisco morning. It seems very much as smoke from a fire, although heavier somehow, as if the thing on fire was a large body of water, smoldering densely. That is, of course, very close to what is happening. Is it something about the light which makes it seem so magical? Or is it simply that I'm not adjusted to this early hour.

Waiting by the waterfront for work to start.

The gallery whre I work is near Fisherman's Wharf, a touristy neighborhood near North Beach. I'm not really sure who buys the eart and I find it hard to visualize, much as I find it hard to picture the Beats and artists of North Beach's past having anything in common with todays tourist throngs. It's beautiful, yes, and filled with enough of the Italian foods I remember from a sesmester abroad to earn it a place in my heart. But it's hard to reconcile with it's image, the one so many tourists stop at the City Lights bookstore in search of.

It's time now for work.