In my almost endless quest to find ways to procrastinate I stumbled upon StumbleUpon. It is a website that finds other websites, images, or videos all over the internet for you to visit. If you are a loyal reader of mine, (which I highly doubt), you read about Pandora, a music site which provides you with loads and loads of new music in a streaming radio fashion by first having you enter an artist that you like. Well, StumbleUpon is kind of like the Pandora for strange websites you’d never find but now you love. I know I love it, but if you are my girlfriend, you probably hate that I’ve posted about a thousand links to your facebook in the last week…

Check it out. It is a lot of fun. Here are some of my favorites so far:
-LIST OF UNUSUAL DEATHS
-FUNNY CAPTIONS
-DYING FROG
-HAVE A HEART
-ONE SENTENCE
-ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
-MORE SEXISM THAN YOU COULD SHAKE A STICK AT

Note: These last two were more shocking to me than anything. I wondered if I had accidentally checked the ‘chauvinist pig’ box in my settings, but apparently it thought these were something I’d really be into.

So recently Evan introduced me to the work of photographer Clayton Hauck.

“If you live in Chicago and have a Myspace or Facebook account, you’ve most likely seen the work of Clayton Hauck. The 25-year-old immortalizes Chicago’s youthful nightlife scene, capturing candid moments of ecstatic DJ bliss, awkward drunken posing, superstar DJs and wannabe celebrities for his photo blog everyoneisfamous.com”

Whilst surfing the net a couple years ago he stumbled upon The Cobra Snake, which is considered the original nightlife photo blog. Noticing there wasn’t anything like it around Chicago he began to point and shoot around town.

“I always had a camera on me, so I just decided to start shooting,” says Hauck, who didn’t really get into photography until his freshmen year at Columbia College. “Now there’s dozens of photo blogs but I was the first to have an actual website that was updated regularly.”

His first-ever posting involved images from Continental’s opening party; today, Everyone is Famous has almost 30,000 photos. The blog has led to paying gigs, too. He now works full-time as a freelance photographer, shooting for various publications and websites.

“Everyone is Famous has always been my portal for getting better and pushing myself to become a better photographer,” he says. “I guess on the larger scale, I’d like to see myself go on to bigger and better things–more exposure for my photography and doing interesting and creative work that people recognize and respect.”

The set up of everyoneisfamous.com is what really drew me in. At first I thought I was looking at some sort of art mag site. Photos are organized by event or venue, and each one is uniquely titled. I spent at least an hour just skimming his hundreds of albums. Give this guy a flickr and you’d probably miss out on a lot of photos, but the albums force you to look at each one as an almost seperate entity.

I’m guessing when this guy isn’t out shooting parties he’s glued to his laptop just uploading and editing photos, or writing in his blog, since he’s got so many gosh darn sites. I actually really enjoyed reading the blog though because it gives a bit of an explaination to the photos. He also links up some cool videos

Witt strapped me to a chair and took the electric cattle-prod to my back until I finished reading this essay on “Generation Y.” It is a good, well though-out essay, but I couldn’t help feeling that it was a very broad generalization about my friends and fellow artists. I wrote a terrible response, but I encourage anyone with more to say than ,”Hey, f*#k you man, I’m not disrespectful!” to get involved in the discussion. It is a secret window into what your mom and dad REALLY thought about all of those art projects you made them hang on the fridge.

Hip-Hop journalist extraordinaire Jeff Chang came through the beautiful Twin Cities for the Republican National Convention. You may have heard about it… or maybe ran into problems getting anywhere for the first week of September.

Jeff is famous for his two books, “Can’t Stop Won’t Stop,” and “Total Chaos.” He was in town gathering info for a piece on hip-hop and politics for VIBE magazine, and Evan and Chantz were lucky enough to sit down with him a few blocks out of range from tear-gas and rubber bullets to sit down with Jeff and get schooled on the state of hip-hop and politics. Check out the short video, and then keep your eye on Jeff for new writing and articles in book stores or magazine racks near you.

On November 6th, New Jersey native(s) Danielson will be coming to the Triple Rock. Doors open at 7 pm and it’s all ages. (woo woo!)

I highly recommend going to check them out, they’ll definitely play a good show and know how to play unconventional and interesting music.

They usually perform as a group in nurses uniforms or at least some type of uniform

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Excuse my sophmoric humor. Humour if you’re from England, or as they say “The U.K.”

Anways, excuse my excitement, but I have recently been turned on to one of the only true beauties left on the internet. I’m sick of most of last year’s fascinations. All that thrills me now is Netflix, funny Youtube videos, my email, google images, you know, the most basic human needs… But I’ve recently been introduced to spice, the salt and pepper to add to my meat-and-potatoes internet diet. The names on the tag reads Pandora, and in tiny letters “streaming radio awesomeness.”…
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The Oak Street Cinema is doing a retrospective on filmmaker Jean Luc Godard.

He was one of the founding members of the Nouvelle Vague, or “French New Wave.” According to wikipedia, many of his films challenged the conventions of Hollywood Cinema, and he was often considered the “most extreme New Wave filmmaker.” His films often expressed his political ideologies as well as his knowledge of film history. In addition, his films often cited existential and Marxist philosophy.

CONTEMPT- Fri Oct 10 - Sun Oct 12 @ 7 & 915pm w/ Sat and Sun Matinees @ 5p

BAND OF OUTSIDERS- Mon. Oct 13 - Tues Oct 14 nightly @ 7 & 9pm

TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER- Wed Oct 15 - Thurs Oct 16 nightly @ 7 & 9pm

PIERROT LE FOU- Wed Oct 22 - Thurs Oct 23 nightly @ 7 & 9pm

I’m really excited to check out his films, I had fun reading up about french new wave and iconoclasm, so I’m pretty intruiged.

About a month ago, let’s call it a month and a half… whenever the Uptown Art Crawl was going on, I received a call on my way out of the Walker, a hard day of copies and data entry.

Emmanuel: “D-DON!”

Donald: “Yo, what’s good.”

E:”Nothing, what are you up to?”

D:”Shit, I’m just up here at the art crawl, met some guy who takes flicks of graffiti. He’s looking for someone to take him out later tonight. You down?”

I’m silent at this point. Who is this guy? You just met him and you’re trying to lurk with him in the dark?

E:”Yeah, I’m down, let me meet you up there.”

Hopped on the old rusty chain and made my way up the hill, where I spotted Donald, who was with his friend Jeb, and we quickly made a detour toward some cheese curds. Donald realized he had been short-changed at the taco stand earlier by almost ten dollars, and it prompted me to discuss a book that I bought a couple of years ago, “HOW TO CHEAT AT EVERYTHING,” which exposes scams, such as short-changing at fairs and carnivals, (and art crawls).

We went on to the booth of Xavier Nuez, a tall Canadian man who definitely embodies the French look. Not the beret and striped shirt, but the olive skin and dark features… Listen to me, I sound like I’m beginning a romance novel.

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Up until a few weeks ago, I had been selectively listening to Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions and Songs in the Key of Life.

You can buy them online if you’re lazy, but I found both records for around 5 bucks each at the Half Priced Books on the Miracle Mile in St. Louis Park and I’m sure they have em at Cheapo as well.

This is a perfect moment of Mutually Assured Dopestruction, does it make Sesame Street cooler? Or Stevie Wonder? Or Both? It’s yours to decide.

Anyway, in the past few days I’ve bought some records by local rockers.
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I make a point of not leaving my house unless absolutely necessary (see: reasons).

Up until moments ago, I’d avoid going to places I thought where everyone stretched their ego to the limits like a spandex jumpsuit from American Apparel, but recently I’ve had those few helping hands pull me out from under the covers and remove the worn and overplayed discs of Roseanne from out of my dvd player to bring me out into the real world (see below)

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