White Sox Home Opener

I don't have many traditions, but going to the White Sox home opener every year with my friend Mike is one I look forward to every year. I've been to a few openers with nice weather, but usually it's still pretty damn cold. All I ask is that it's warm enough that I don't have to wear gloves.

[ CLICK PICS TO MAKE BIGGER ]

 

My opening day ritual starts with a trip just a few blocks West of the park down 35th to Morrie O'Malley's Hot Dogs in Brideport for my first Polish of the season. Then I get to the park early enough to make a lap around the concourse and check out the changes and grab my first in park beer and sausage with onions of the year (below). Although I'm a traditionalist with some things, I welcome the Imported Beer Booth .

 

 

Grand slam in the seventh!

 

 

Everything but the Jewel Case and 1/4th the space!

Tired of losing the war on space to my CD collection, I have begun converting jewel cases to plastic sleeves. 25 jewel cases (pictured below) take up as much space 105 CDs in sleeves!

Top-CDs in plastic sleeves. Bottom-jewel cases. It got little tricky with digipacks, but practicality finally won out over sentimentality and I took an exacto to them and cut them in half and trimmed them to fit in the sleeves. Since I don't plan to resell the CDs anyway, it's no big deal.

RIGHT: Here's a CD in the sleeve with the booklet on one side and the CD and tray card on the other side. And for the astute Didjits fan, yes the booklet is upside down for the sake of this picture (the front cover on the other side is upside down). For those of you playing at home, that's the Gatefold CD sleeve (SCDGF4) from Bags Unlimited.

This part seems to have made a few fellow music nerds cry. Continuing in the "conserving space" theme of breaking down my CDs to the much slimmer plastic sleeves, I've started on the box sets. It was a little harder to bring myself to reduce them to just CDs, covers, and the books, but once I brought myself to tear apart the Velvets and Nuggets box, everything else was pretty easy. Some boxes, like the Zombies, XTC, Grow Fins, and the Ornette Coleman are simply too beautiful to break apart, so they'll remain intact. But hopefully everything else will get broken down.

the Anal Retentive Moleskine User

the Anal Retentive Moleskine User

After a year or two of trial and error I came up with the following set-ip for my note taking needs. I use a pocket Moleskine notepad and doctor each new one up as follows as soon as I get a new one.

THE INSIDE FRONT COVER: On the inside front cover is a 15 month calendar customized from TimeAndDate.com - because you can't really be an anal retentive note taker if you're not dating things properly. Also inside are several different size post-it notes which always come in handy - 4 or 5 post-its seem to be the limit before making the Moleskine bulge too much.

The upper right hand corner of the first 25 pages are cut to make it easy to distinguish between this section (which is for more important day-to-day info) and rest of the book (which is for more trivial info and other poo).

THE BACK COVER AND POCKET: Because post-it notes on the front cover aren't enough - I keep two different size index cards in the back cover. Five or six seem to be the limit before it bulges too much.

ANAL RETENTIVE NOTES KEY: Pretty much most of my Moleskine is to keep track of books, albums, movies, and websites I want to check out and interesting words and phrases. By coming up with some symbols before certain entries I can refer to them quickly - it helps when I'm in a record store with a few dollars burning a hole in my pocket.

Here's my sketchbook set-up - a Moleskine sketchbook, about a dozen pens (even though I tend keep going back to the same 2), and an image morgue of about 15 pages tucked into the back pocket of the Moleskine.  The image morgue pages serves as references for drawings and idea starting points for cartoons. The pages rotate, but most of the images are things pilfered from stock photo sites, photoblogs, and anywhere else on the net where I stumble upon images. All of this fits in a larger mesh bag that's always in my messenger bag.

return of the cat pictures!

ABOVE: Charlie Hodges in front and Chinaski up top in back

 

Mix Disc Covers: even more single artist best-ofs

It's another batch of single artist best of mixes...

[ CLICK THE COVERS TO ENLARGE ]

ABOVE: Madness and Stereolab   BELOW: Arcwelder

ABOVE: Depeche Mode and Led Zeppelin - both mixes are double discs and pretty much replaced me ever playing whole albums by either band again. The Zeppelin mix is subtitled "What Sort of Dumbass Makes a Led Zeppelin Mix In This Day of Age?"

BELOW: A double disc set of Superchunk.

some pictures around new York

[ CLICK PICS TO ENLARGE ]

"Scoop. Pray. Eat." 2007

 There was a Banh Mi place that I had to hit on every trip to New York - a small deli counter in sewing supplies/video store - but the place is gone and it looks like the building is being renovated for condos. Now that my favorite place for a Banh Mi is gone, this place will have to do.

 

 I have no idea what these Travis Bickle, Bronson, Hanibal Lecter flyers I saw in Chinatown are for, but they looked damn cool.

I love a good sandwich, and the sandwiches at this insanely good smelling market were some of the best I've ever had.

More Mix Disc covers

Here are some more old mix disc covers.....

[ CLICK ON THE COVERS TO ENLARGE ]

ABOVE LEFT: WHAT POOR GODS WE DO MAKE, A Naked Raygun best of that might be the mix of mine that I've played the most

ABOVE: Two Roxy Music best-of mixes, splitting their career into two halves. The cover collages are supposed to be a parody/homage to Roxy's use of glamour girls for their covers.

BELOW: A Beach Boys best-of made up of only pre Pet Sounds era music and a collection of my favorite mash-ups (the ones that actually stand up to repeated listens)