John Drake

Effort and Love

Chuck Jones has probably made you laugh.

Largely because he worked like this...

Corn On The Palouse

Sometimes a photo just turns out real nice. This is right outside of where I went to college. Took it the other weekend and it just kind of jumped out of the upload.

The winters here were quite unpleasant. But the early summers...

Pixel Track

In just 3:49 we're shown a problem, presented with a solution, have the technology fully explained, and see nice uses of the final product. Things aren't rushed, nor are they drawn out. it's very concise.

Seeing some of these signs in use would be a delight. I kind of liked the sound of the changing messages, too.

The Blend At Drake Cooper

Having some fun with The Blend.

Lose Yourself In The Music, The Moment

This is excellent. The song takes on new meaning watching it be expressed through sign language. The aggression, the passion, the motion.

A good definition of successful art is if the artist can successfully convey the feeling to the observer. At least, that's the way Tolstoy defined it.

Influence

Often when the subject of influences is brought up, giants are named. The Beatles, the Brandos... But it was refreshing to be reminded of a different type of influence. The type where people can have a notable impact on the thing that they love without becoming a megastar and constantly gracing front pages.

It was this bit in Rolling Stone on Joan Jett that stood out:

Jett is more reserved, less certain, talking about her influence and legacy. "I have a tough time seeing it. I'd feel conceited: 'Hey, that's my footprint.' "

Dave Grohl can sum it up for her. He remembers standing with her and Foo Fighters guitarist Pat Smear at a European festival, watching Iggy Pop and the Stooges. "In that moment," Grohl says, "I understood this lineage" — Iggy's influence on Jett and the Runaways; her support of the L.A. punk scene that produced Smear's first group, the Germs, and Stooges bassist Mike Watt; and their effect, in turn, on Grohl's other band Nirvana. "None of that would have happened without Joan as a rung on the ladder."

"You gotta put the Runaways at the same level as the Ramones and the Sex Pistols," Smear maintains. "They were doing in L.A. what those guys were doing in New York and London: getting kids to join bands. 

22 Pixar Storybasics

#4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.

We can learn a lot from Pixar.

Only Dead Fish finds great stuff.

Things To Think

Think in ways you’ve never thought before
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
Larger than anything you’ve ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
Maybe wounded and deranged: or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he’s carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you’ve never seen.

When someone knocks on the door, think that he’s about
To give you something large: tell you you’re forgiven,
Or that it’s not necessary to work all the time, or that it’s
Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

-Robert Bly

Watch Out For The Tusk

“Rumours” is one of the most immaculate products in the history of American pop — every song a potential hit, every moment airtight. “Tusk,” by contrast, is full of air; the songs are swollen with atmosphere. It is where obsessive artistic control circles around into raggedness, where chaos and order dance together in a cloud of whirling scarves. The album probably has five too many songs, and a handful of tracks are two minutes too long, but that’s the cost of this kind of genius: excess, bombast, hubris, getting carried away.

A good analogy to tie to things. Like Quartz's Saturday note on tech's growing arrogance. 

Advice For Young Writers

What I’d really like, in fact, is to be young and middle-aged, and perhaps even very old, all at the same time—and to be dark- and fair-skinned, deaf and hearing, gay and straight, male and female. I can’t do that in life, but I can do it in writing, and so can you. Never forget that the truest luxury is imagination, and that being a writer gives you the leeway to exploit all of the imagination’s curious intricacies, to be what you were, what you are, what you will be, and what everyone else is or was or will be, too.

Andrew Solomon has written something wonderful here.

I'm not a writer.

But I am in the middle of things.