September 2005
Sep 15, 2005
Rocking the flute solo
I went to see System of a Down on Saturday.
Wha???
Yeah, I never thought I’d go either. I thought many things of neo-metal (or whatever it’s label is now) but “enjoyable” was not one of them.
However….
System of a Down is good live. Go see them. You will not be dissappointed. But bring ear plugs.
A word about The Mars Volta. Never have I felt such anger and sympathy for a single band at any one time. The Mars Volta do not belong in a mid-sized stadium in front of a metal crowd. Duh, you would say, yet these things continue to happen. I can try to describe them as avant-gaurde Jazz meets metal. And everying great and god-awful about that combination came out of them this past weekend. They were aimless, meandering, pretentious, challenging and occasionally brillant. That being said, two individuals need to be recognized. The drummer, who puts everyone who ever picked up a pair of sticks to shame, and the utility musician, who, and I kid you not, busted out a flute solo. And not just any flute solo, this was the best…flute solo…ever. In front of a metal crowd no less.
Everyone knew who the badass in the house was that night.
Sep 15, 2005
Tattoos on other people are awesome
My wife is considering getting a new tattoo. Yep. She’s more badass then I am.
She’s from Sweden. More specifically she’s from an area in the south know as SmÃ¥land (that’s small land) It’s a province so old that’s it’s got its own old-school coat of arms; complete with lion and crossbow. What more could you want in a tattoo?
What’s my part in all of this? You mean other than being the supportive husband?
Unfortunately, the largest image of SmÃ¥land’s coat of arms in all of the vast internets is about 100px tall. There’s not a tattoo artist alive who could pull a detail-quality tattoo out of a severly compressed 100px jpg. Can I? Well…
Here’s the source imagery. (Props to International Civic Heraldry)
Some color-range-selecting, work-path-making, exporting-paths-to-Illustrator, and manual-massaging-anchor-points kung fu later we have this:
