Never Forget

A lot has happened since the last post. I won’t try to recount everything, but here are a few of the more noteworthy happenings, in no particular order. Obama got elected, Beatbots turned 4, I got a gym membership (but didn’t go much in December), I put some new stuff on Hexplosion, the Soft Cement EP is almost in the can. Beyond that, lots of good times with friends and family. I’ve been going through a lot of self-examination these last few months, and I can’t help but feel like something next-level is materializing.

Here’s to making it happen in 09! Stay positive!

• Dead Venues is launched. Possible mention of it in the Sun this weekend.
• Had an awesome weekend at the beach house with Raven and the fam.
• Geoff and I settled on Soft Cement as our band name. We’re done recording the EP and only have one more mixing session. Packaging is gonna be tight.
• I launched the super secret Beatbots Digital. Currently hosting the Small Sur album and soon hosting the Soft Cement EP (Think About It).
• At work I’m redesigning the UI for Cellblock and it so far it looks mad sexier. We’ll be launching that some time next week probably.
• Speaking of work. Big things in the haps with NBC / UNIVERSAL.
• In an effort to get more involved with the IRL, I’ve joined up with the kids at the Hexagon Space. I’m real stoked on it. I’ll be working on the space, book shows, web programming, promotions, etc.
• September 8th is my 27th birthday. Feel free to buy me something awesome.
• September 13th I’ll be running a Beatbots booth at Hampdenfest (”MEATROTS”). If you have a tent that you’d like to lend me, holler!

In other news, I was watching the Obama speech tonight and who should I see on the TV in the audience, but sis Caitlin McD. Surreal!

The band stuff that Geoff and I have been working on is really starting to come together. We’re going to record a 4 / 5 song demo late July and it should be available for listening the first week or two of August. Total running time will be about 10 minutes. Stay tuned for more on that! We don’t have a name yet, but we’re working on it.

Beatbots will have a table at the Big Art Show this Saturday at the Load of Fun. More info on that can be found here.

Things have been well. I had a really nice Easter weekend with the family in OC. Raven took some great photos. We had an awesome sushi dinner at OC Wasabi, and strangley enough ran into one of my coworkers there … 100+ miles from where we normally see each other. After the fam was good and stuffed (and drunk) we met up with the neighbors to go bowling. First round Chuck got first, my Dad got second and I got third. Take that ladies! On Easter day us kids ventured to buy some herbs in West OC (legal) and then everyone at a ton of awesome food. I love the beach house.

Raven and Connor, Ocean City 2008 (Photo by me)

Jeff “The Librarian” Mewbourn and I were interviewed for Maryland Mornings (with Tom Hall) on WYPR. We talked about Jeff’s live recordings, the Beatbots A/V Club, and the Baltimore music scene. Live recordings on the show were Thank You, Double Dagger and Small Sur. It’ll be hillarious when people are commuting to work in the morning and all the sudden DD is melting their life with “Luxury Condos for the Poor”. We’re not sure yet when it’s going to air, but I’ll post again when I find out. In the even that you can’t get 88.1FM around Baltimore, it will be available via podcast on their site and shortly thereafter on the Beatbots A/V Club (they said it was totes cool to repost).

This weekend me and Raven and Big T went to Ikea and I picked up a rad record cabinet and a nice glass case to cram my horde of toys into. After that we went to Dick’s and bought some athletic balls. Big T got a basket ball and I got a soccer ball and a basketball (glow in the dark yo!). Me and T shot some hoops in Druid Hill park and it was totally awesome.

Things are kind of up in the air right now with the punk band. Geoff and I have been out of touch mostly and my search for a practice space has so far come up nada. In the mean time I’ve been jamming out in the apartment (got a long way to go) and listening to a lot of stuff. Speaking of that, my Spring Mix is just about done … I’ll be posting that soon (maybe even later tonight). Also, this just in, me and several friends are about to venture into a very awesome website that’s going to be an interactive history of the now dead underground venues in Baltimore, stretching back through the 90s and 80s. More awesome news to come.

PEASE

(I wear tight pants now)

ps The Boogans came home!

Sorry I’ve been out of touch recently. I’ve had a lot of stuff going on. For a while I thought I was going crazy, there was so much to do, but I made it through.

Things have been really busy at work. We’ve got a bunch of big contracts in the works, and I’ve been working overtime on a bunch of Flash/Actionscript stuff. It’s really cool when its working, but extremely frustrating when it isn’t. I’m going to be some kind of Flash guru one of these days if I keep this up.

I forgot to mention it, but I relaunched Beatbots a few weeks back. I’d been working on that for a few months, and in one crazy week (while I had a bunch of crazy work stuff going on too) I got it launched. I’m happy with how it turned out and it seems like other people are liking it too. There’s a lot more activity on the site now, which is really cool.

Last week / weekend I spent most of my evenings working on my toys for the Vinylmore DIY toy show (opens this Friday). Disaster struck on Sunday morning (deadline day for my toys) as I was assembling them. Because I was dumb and painted over the arm and neck joints (learning what not to do for next time), it was really hard to get them put back together. When I did get them together, after much forcing, I went to pose of of the arms and it totally snapped off! I was freaking out! Thankfully I had another blank Munny in the apartment, so I stole an arm from that, did a quick paint / coat job, and pieced him back together again.

Here’s how they turned out. A jolly riff on the native Hampdenites. :)

Sneak peek at all the Vinylmore Toys

This week I’m starting on an interactive media art exhibit that’s opening at the Creative Alliance on March 15. It’s collaborative project with the dudes in Post Typography, and I’m really stoked on it. Here’s the details …

Post Typography: Public Print Lab
Minstallation Gallery

Mar 15-Apr 26 Opens Sat Mar 15, 4-6pm
Free

Presented by artist/impresario R.L. Tillman, the newest addition to Baltimore’s cultural landscape has already staked its position as the region’s most vibrant miniature installation space. Emerging and established artists are encouraged to spread their wings in this intimate yet ambitious gallery, with 225 square inches of floor space and generous 14 inch ceilings.

Avant garde design subversives Nolen Strals and Bruce Willen, aka Post Typography, convert the gallery into a miniature, quasi-automated, open source publishing house. Images emailed to a given address during the run of the exhibition will print out in the gallery and be bound and published as a book at its end. Making waves nationally since 2001, Post Typography has received numerous fancy design awards and been featured in such publications as Ellen Lupton’s Thinking With Type and D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself, The Art of Modern Rock, Metropolis magazine, and Taschen’s Contemporary Graphic Design. They specialize in conceptual typography and custom lettering, with forays into art, apparel, music, curatorial work and vandalism. Technical assistance for Public Print Lab provided by Justin Blemly of beatbots.com, DIY media resource for Baltimore, DC and beyond.

Next Tuesday I’m having a Beatbots Launch Party at the new Vice club (old Fletchers). Raven and I will be DJing with one more person TBA, and we’re trying to screen a bunch of video by Beatbots contributors Ann Everton, Kris Anchor and others. More details on that a digital flyer coming as soon as I can get it worked out.

I’ve got some other stuff on the horizon too, but I’ll hold off on that for now. So remember Blarg, even though I haven’t seen much of you lately, I haven’t forgotten about you.

Your pal,
Justin