Command + Shift + 3

I was laying in bed the other night, blast-eye awake from drinking a coffee just an hour before, streaming some movies online. Shawshank Redemption came on, so I couldn't resist watching the entire thing. 

Right towards the end of the movie, when Red (Morgan Freeman) is released from prison and lives a normal life bagging groceries, I noticed something really funny. He was wearing an apron that was an eerily similar color to one that I'd seen before. A quick screen capture, a little Photoshop, and voila..

uhhhh...

YouTube fucking with me, once again. 

"we was like peas and carrots"

Usually before I go to bed I stream a movie online to help me fall asleep faster. 

On this particular day I happened to notice something hilarious right before I fell asleep. 

Forest Gump was on. I usually favor falling asleep to things I've seen a hundred times. It kind of helps to not be distracted when you're trying to get to la la land. However, right as I was dozing off, the feed lagged right on an amazing frame of the movie:

young Forest getting smoked in the face by a rock! YES! It stayed still on this frame for about a minute.

Now normally this part bums me out because of those asshole Southern kids and their rock-throwings, but this screen capture was just too good to be true. I think I was a nanosecond away from capturing the rock itself. On top of that, the photo is just amazing: Forest's jacked face and Jenny's nonchalant gaze into the distance. I couldn't help but add "peas" and "carrots" to the photo.

Is this funny to anybody else besides me? I may submit it to Reddit. Maybe even as a .gif sequence.

somethin's fishy

I just recieved this message on Youtube while trying to watch something.

".....but, but I'm in Canda!"

I Fucked Up a Photo

It was only until recently that I realized where my photographic style is heading / has always been. My father and I were laying on a beach in Florida last week. We'd taken a spontaneous road trip to Naples, FL for a week and found ourselves an afternoon to relax that wasn't actually spent inside a car. There we sat, beneath a 40 degree sun, facing the Gulf of Mexico. I think I was thirteen the last time I saw that water. There was, as there is every summer afternoon in Florida, an incredible storm system developing everywhere around us. Blue skies were turning into black and winds began to pick up. However, this didn't stop most of us from visiting the beach.

Directly next to me was my Mamiya 645 medium-format camera. I purchased it in early May and it hasn't left my side ever since. It literally changed the way I visualize, approach, and execute photographs. The decision to switch to medium-format simply stemmed for my current distaste for both 35mm film (in terms of it's grain seen upon printing) and digital (I don't know if I've ever put my heart into a digital photo my entire life). My Mamiya is fully, fully manual; some shots I'm not even sure will pan-out because I've tried to shoot them on the fly and each exposure requires careful attention to several aspects.

So there I am: dad, a storm, my camera, a beach, and myself. My dad suggested I take a photo of the oncoming storm. To his credit, my dad taught me composition at a very young age. "Get some of those ferns in the foreground, And" he has said to me at ages five, fifteen, and twenty-five. I agreed with him and pulled my camera out whilst being protective of swirling sand. I veered through the viewfinder and opted for a vertical composition (holy shit folks, this is like the punk rock version of photography). However, I noticed something very personally satisying that was creeping into the frame from below: my fathers tanned, hairy, sweating stomach. This balanced the photo perfectly. From top to bottom: the towering storm system that is contained by the frame, descending towards hoards of umbrellas, bodies and sand, only to be anchored in the lower-third portion of the photo by a glistening male stomach. I quickly made the correct exposure adjustments, cranked the advancement lever and took the photo.

For me, all I could think of was how much this photograph summed up "Florida": Sure, there's a view, but there's also a lot of tanned old people.

And that's exactly what attracts me when taking personal photographs. By "personal" I mean images that are intended for nothing other than advancing my own body of work. For lack of better wording, I enjoying aesthetically pleasing photographs with something fucked up about them. Something perhaps that is small in the frame, but just captivating enough to make you question why it's there. To continue the story, I wanted my dad to take a photo with my camera, in an effort to experience a sort of "passing-the-torch-full-circle" moment between the two of us. The only direction I gave was "shoot that way", to which I pointed towards the other end of the beach. As he walked away, I noticed a large family tearing down there beach gear to go home directly in his path. I thought it would have made a great photo to see an oncoming storm and a dissatisfied family heading for the hills. He walked right past them. Seeing as I wanted him to take the photo he wanted (which was not doubt a conventional landscape), I kept my mouth closed and watched him handle a camera older than any of his children.

I want to say this is a rather recent discovery, but not only have I been practicing photography in this fashion, I've been living it. For instance, whenever I put on an outfit, I make sure there's usually one fucked-up aspect to it ie. a nice collared shirt/sweater combination with some nice jeans and white shoes that have been painted black and have blown so far open you can see my socks. Like showing up to a well-dressed b.y.o.b. event and holding a 40 oz Olde English. So, to say that this recent "refining" of a photographic style is news to myself, it really isn't, because I live it every time I walk out my door.

should have been a writer

Haircuts Are Kind Of Like Avocado's

By Andy Schmidt

Haircuts are kind of like avocado's.
You're excited when you first get it, and it usually costs a small fortune.
It's hard to pick which one you want.
It looks great, but there's something just not right about it.
You think it will grow faster by keeping it in the sun more,
and by the time it's just the way you want it,
it's fucking ruined.

The End.

always a good time.

This is what happens when my family gets together with a MacBook close by. This time we were in Jasper, AB.

From left to right: myself, Aunt Laura, Bike, and mom in the background.

Enjoy.

heading to the village pt. 2

Well, it's Sunday, and that means it's time for another trip to the clothing donation bin.
Here's what else is hitting the racks today.

1. Black H&M jeans. I wore them almost every time I worked or played a show. And it shows. Blown-out crotch for days and faded beyond belief. Peace out.

2. Outrageous blue plaid shorts. I pulled them from the "Goofy Golf Shit" pile I have in my house. Did I ever wear them?

3. From the same pile, a blue cotton golf shirt from the London Hunt Club. Within my lifetime, they wouldn't allow black people to play there. Fuck them. I'd rather burn it.

4. Khakis. A truly full-circle thrift store moment.

5. A white t-shirt with headphones on it. Maybe three people will understand this when they read it.

6. Black pants with most of the buttons blown-out. If I were to go commando wearing these things my dick would swing all over the place.

7. Miscellaneous green t-shirt. Get out of my life.

8. Brown corduroy skate shorts that I bought off the internet for my 18th birthday. They're done.

9. Black t-shirt, because I have more of them than any other item of clothing.

10. White dress shirt with the flimsiest collar ever. It looks like sad dog ears.

11. Timber Creek flex khakis. No reason really.

12. Green Vivanno t-shirt. Too many memories of spoiled U of Toronto students with high demands.

That's all the room I have for now. I think I have room for one more trip. Until next time.

Ode to Pablo

Yesterday, I experienced one of the most gratifying experiences of my life.

I was sitting in my brothers room and noticed he had an acoustic guitar leaning against his wall. This guitar is in rough shape: it's missing a string, it goes out of tune easily, it's hard to play and is generally the butt-end of a lot of instrument jokes in that house (they've been contemplating selling it for probably three years by now).

So, like most instruments I see, I picked it up and began to tinker with it. The guitar was sorely out of tune. I actually can't imagine a guitar going that out of tune naturally on it's own. So for the first time in my life I attempted to tune it on my own without the assistance of an electronic tuner.

Doing this is somewhat a tricky task even for experienced ears. Most often you begin with the A string (the second-lowest string before hitting the low E), mainly because it is least likely to go out of tune on a guitar. Didn't matter much anyway, it sounded tuned up to almost a C. This is where the gratifying part began.

Years ago, we used to play a game where there would be one person striking a chord, and two others blindly guessing what it could be. The easy part about this game is that chords are normally strummed downwards and you can assimilate certain chords from others by how they "ring-out", meaning that most guitarists know what the high E and B strings sound like when played together, so if you hear those two played you can assume the chord struck was in the range of E,A or B. This can be easily heard on guitars - unlike pianos which resonate more as tones rather than the plucking of strings. However, you can't tune a guitar by strumming a chord (actually you can it's just very, very hard to do). So you have to begin with single strings.

Beginning with the A string, I tried to hear an A chord in my head. I always thought the easiest way to do this was to just recall a song that opens with an A chord (a million songs do, pick your own). Then, it may sound odd, but you have to tune it to your memory by playing the note over and over in your head until the sound you visualize matches the sound you actually hear. From here you tune the remaining strings in relation to where they are from the A using a series of harmonics and simple methods. I tuned the entire guitar, save for the missing string.

After playing for a little bit, I asked my brother to look up an online guitar tuner for me (he was at his computer). These sites don't tune your guitar, but rather play simulated tones that you tune your guitar to. He played me the E note from the computer and I strummed the E string on the guitar. I was off by a half step (imagine the distance between a black key and a white key on a piano). This is actually my favorite part of the story.

I was so close to tuning the guitar to the exact notes, but I didn't. I love that. I remember a time in my life when I'd pick up a guitar without any knowledge of anything musical, play a fake chord, and scream Creed lyrics to make my friends laugh. Now I can practically tune one by ear. If I had tuned it perfectly I wouldn't feel the same excitement as I do now, because I know I've
made progress but not quite enough.

Cellist Pablo Casals was well into his 90's when once asked by an interviewer why he practiced, even at that age, for hours a day.

He said "I'm beginning to notice some improvement"

heading to the village

Today I ran out of hangers. I thought it was probably time I make room by donating some clothes that I never wear and have no use for. Here's the list of shirts I've decided to give away, in no particular order, that will fill my bag until the next stop.

1. The brown/white striped dress shirt with the brown paint stain on it.

2. TSA Brand black hoodie with no sleeves that probably cost me over $100 but does not belong on my body past grade 10.

3.Blue collared sweater that was left at my old Starbucks that I'm pretty sure is for girls.

4. New York t-shirt that I wore almost the entire Hue east coast tour. It's just not in good shape anymore. And it smells weird.

5. Absolutely asinine Marine dress shirt with the gold embossed boat on the back. I bought it as a joke and never wore it once.

6. Striped sweater that looks like it belongs to Ernie. Have been contemplating its demise for years.

7. Cream plaid shirt. It's actually pretty nice. Looks like a cottage vacation. Too small though.


8. Ribbed grey sweater I bought in grade 8. It looks amazing still but I'm not in 98 degrees.

9. Light blue dress shirt that was bought for me as a gift but it has these bands of shiny material woven throughout it. Not down with that.

10. A Penguin wool sweater from back when Penguin clothes weren't cool and the symbol was simpler and smaller. Shrunken beyond the point of no return.

11. Brown sweater vest that goes with nothing.

12. Brown dress shirt from when the Gap was obsessed with stretchy clothes. It's part Lycra, and Laura once told me it's like hugging a diaper.

13. Sand colored Stussy button up I bought in France in grade 6. Didn't fit me then, doesn't fit me now.

14.A brown shirt that should only be worn by people living in the NWT.

15. One of the very first Skate4Cancer shirts ever made. It has an owl on it. Should belong in a museum. It used to be white but I would have no problem calling it piss-yellow now.

16. A huge black t-shirt I got from playing a show at an iPhone app launch party. Outside of letting my girlfriend wear it to bed, I have no use for it.

That's all the space I have in my bag. Until next time.

there goes another one

A very, very long time ago I swore to myself that I'd one day learn to play Fleetwood Mac's Never Going Back Again on guitar. There was just something about the song that made me want to know how it's done.

I really didn't know how to play guitar back then. Like, at all. I just remember talking a lot of shit on how I was going to learn that song and blow everyone away, like how people learn one song on piano just to impress their friends when they see one in their living room. But again, I didn't know anything about guitar. I didn't know how to read tablature, what a capo was, and how to tune an instrument any other way.

Now I'm not saying by any means that I'm a pro player today. SO far from it. It's more of a hobby than anything. I'll usually have two guitars in my house at most times that are kept in different tunings, just for fun.
The interesting thing (and yes there is one) is that skills advance over time without even realizing it. Almost how a runner will add a mile to a run without recognizing they'd done it.

Today, I'm sick and bedridden.
I was listening to FM's Rumours and decided to take a solid attempt at learning the song. I simply looked up a cover on some guy playing it on YouTube, figured out the tuning (CGDGBE, so awesome) and figured it out from there. It only took me about 10 minutes to get the patterns right(ish) and it was done. Signed it off the list.

Now, keep in mind that my version is hella-sloppy and I could have practiced for a week until it was pristine, but I was so excited to learn that I had to tell everyone.

Here it goes.

bike bike bike

This video is just hilarious.
Not only does it hit on a somewhat personal level, but the entire inner-city bike culture.
Although this video seems to be geared (no pun) towards downtown bike messengers, anyone who's ridden on a bike at least once on a busy street can relate. Seeing as I ride my bike for usually an hour a day, I can humorously sympathize with the points made.

tree trunk progression

Last night I hosted a band meeting; one that I've wanted to do for some time now.
We're coming into our last leg of recording. Our producer, Mike Tompkins, is currently enjoying some much-needed rest in Mexico with his wife. Upon his arrival in less than a week, we'll be hitting the recording studio again for the final recording sessions on this album.

This fact scares the shit out of me.

Being a musician, and having been one for many years now, you begin to take very special care of how your music takes shape. Just as a parent would make sure their child was guided through all the proper steps, given the proper attention, and sent off into the world proudly, musicians are equally enamored with making music that properly represents their passion and vision for their music.

This fact excites the hell out of me.

Firstly, I'm no song writer. Never have been and never will be. I am far too critical of anything I write that even touches poetry, I have no gift for melody, and if I were to finish a song I would hate releasing it because I'd hate to hear people analyze it. So with this aside, I'll touch upon my true passion: the rest of it. The day I picked up a guitar I knew that the instrument alone would never be enough. When I sat on my bed strumming my first chords, I heard possibility. It was like a canal had just been built in my brain that had the ability to channel all of my creativity, vision, and passion. It was only when I picked up drums years later that things were coming full circle - I learned what rhythm was. Fundamentally, knowing these two aspects of music (melody and timing) opened up a valley of creative potential.

This fact brought on curiosity.

Yet, like anything, practice is necessary.
When I listen back to the first album Danny and I ever recorded, Fly Away, it sounds exactly like what it was: two teenage boys sitting in a room discovering a range of instruments, one at a time. If we were to re-work those songs now they would be infinitely different from their original sound. Yet this is the very thing that makes this progression special. I'm sure that if you were to look at the progressive career of a musician in terms of growth, it would look very similar to a tree trunk cross-section; some years were more progressive than others, yet it continues to grow and expand exponentially.

This fact influenced progress.

Now, staring down yet another album, we have more experience, more fantastically talented members, more songs, and more opportunity. Yes, we have all these things, but what do we do with them? Get to fucking work is what we do.

The entire purpose of the meeting I previously mentioned was to take a somewhat different approach to the recording process this time around. As was the case with the previous record, I would say that most of the songs were executed with a "face value" approach. By this I mean that we knew how to play these songs, and we played them just as they were (with maybe the exception of 2 songs). There's nothing wrong with that in actuality; the record turned out nicely. However, due to time restraints we weren't fully able to explore the songs sonically.

This fact makes my skin crawl.

I mentioned yesterday to the band that I was interested in over-recording this album. (p.s. drummers should never hold band meetings). By over-recording I mean that we should really strive for the "no-idea-is-a-bad-idea" approach. Instrumental tracks can be discarded as easily as they are recorded. What I am interested more in is what sounds can transpire from experimentation, because if you think about it, most great pop songs have one strange sonic aspect to them; something that differentiates it from the guitar/bass/drums formula.
I also mentioned that we should bring every instrument we own to the recording sessions. I believe that having extensive opportunities in front of you is far more advantageous to your practice than none at all (I've been trying to put an analogy here for an hour, but couldn't think of anything worthy of comparing).

Another thing I'm interested in, personally, is what to do with silence, if anything. Last night we were all sitting together around the old modern campfire (Danny's mac) listening to rough mix-downs of the record. During certain moments there would be dead silence in the middle of a song that would suit the track just perfectly. Other times we'd sit and think that silence wasn't even an option.
And that's just what do to with the silent parts. Think about how we are going to execute everything else. Thankfully (not luckily), our producer is exceedingly talented at what he does. The quality of the demos (not actual recordings) that he has given us so far almost surpass the quality of the last record already, and they haven't even been manipulated/balance/compressed electronically yet. His talent has obviously been recognized and he deserves every bit of it, so there are obviously things that are completely dependent on mixing that we just have to leave in his hands, which are made of gold, by the way.

This part will be continued...

The Find

Sometimes I just don't believe in things. More specific, I believe things will never happen. One of the great personal attributes I've held high over the years is my ability to practice reason, and very well. I'm not an idealist - I'm a realist. I know when things are so fantastical that even romanticizing certain ideas is a waste of my time. Don't get me wrong: I dream as much as the next person, but I know when to draw the line between "sure, that's possible" and "sure, that's a nice fantasy". Although this is the line in which my mind usually draws in the sand, sometimes I just cling to realities long enough for them to actually come true.

On the evening of December 21st, 2008, I was given a Christmas bonus at the establishment I worked at for the amount of one hundred dollars. At this point in my life I was really into amassing a musical instrument arsenal, which continues steadily to this day. I wanted everything that challenged everything capable of sonic altercations (mainly directed towards electric guitar playing). At the time I was obsessed with something called an Ebow, which is an abbreviation of "electronic bow", "electric bow" or "energy bow". This device, about half the size of a can of tuna (wow, what a shit example), is a hand-held wireless device that creates electromagnetic fields of energy that, once placed over a guitar string, cause it to vibrate, simulating the sound of a stringed instrument. Trust me when I say I was obsessed. The bonus went to this, plus a bit extra. I ran home to test it out (on an acoustic guitar, strangely enough) and it was everything I'd dreamed of.

Here is where this story begins to take shape. My parents' marriage was in it's final state of disrepair around this time. This being the case, the summer I moved home from Toronto would be my last in that house, as we were about to sell the house that following fall season. I'm not sure how it happened, but I must have put the Ebow in a drawer and forgot about it towards the end of the summer, because it would be the last time I ever saw it.

I can't explain the breakneck speed needed to move out of that house. Towards the end of the move, we'd given ourselves such little time to pack that everything, and I mean everything, was rammed at full speed into boxes, wrapping paper, bins, jars, bags etc. (productive procrastination: a genetic guarentee to most Schmidt family members). The worst part is that everything was shoved somewhere, meaning that it could be in one of four houses, in one of three cities, in one of 200 boxes. Needle-in-a-hay-stack-type-shit.

There were only a few items I've missed over the years: a vintage Kentucky Derby t-shirt, some MiniDV tapes, some photographs, drawings, and that Ebow. My friend Danny knows this way too well. Wherever I'd go; whether back home, my cottage, any family members house - I'd always say, half-jokingly "Oh, and while I'm there I'll check for that Ebow". I'm not kidding when I say I'd say this almost every time, for several years. It would usually be followed by a very mutual sigh between us, and the realization that this thing would never be found.

I've already mention that I'm a realist, which doesn't rule out everything. One of my favorite lines that I've used over the years, which frustratingly makes sense to many, is "I didn't lose it. I just haven't found it yet". Losing something is accepting that you've lost it. When you know something is within your grasp, there is no reason to accept defeat. That's like saying just because you got sunburned you're going to look like a fucking lobster for the rest of your life. It's not like it doesn't exist anymore (philosophy majors, fuck off on that one). So with this in mind, I never stopped looking for it. Everywhere I thought it could possibly be, I looked through in a process of elimination. Imagine Indiana Jones trying to find the Arc of the Covenant in that warehouse. Kind of like that.

I came home yesterday to my moms house, mainly to work on school-related projects in the privacy of my own thoughts and not have to worry about anything related to being in Toronto. As usual, I grabbed about six beers and a few cassettes and descended into the basement to untangle the mess of cardboard, clothes, lego, books and Christmas decorations. Things were going as planned: I pulled a few photos from my past, a few books, some paint brushes, a couple slides, reels of Super 8 film and select skateboarding magazines. Then, there it was.

Laundry Room Drawers was the name of the box. I can understand why I've never touched this box. For starters, it was under some box called Moms Books, which is a fucking landfill of 40-year-old woman literature. Kind of like if Oprah's book club needed an archivist. After sorting through this and downing an entire can of Guiness, I undertook the triple-decker sandwich of needles, thread and newsprint that was the next box.

Scraping towards the bottom, I found it. The object I'd been looking for all these years was staring me right in the face. It had to be the equivalent to seeing an old lover for the first time in years, and you're both single, and outrageously horny. The unflattering grey sheen covering this relatively insignificant piece of my history was staring me in the face, and everything I believe in was rekindled. The look on my face was priceless. I know this because I took a picture of myself holding the Ebow and sent it to Danny. He thought it was a stapler.

I didn't write this for you, the reader. I wrote it so I'd remember this moment. However, you can take this story with you as a reminder that hope and belief, no matter how unattainable or distant, is very possible. I should know - I just did it.

If this overly-positive article could visually personify itself, it would look like Bambi eating an ice cream cone while Thumper sings Hallelujah.

dode

I found this photo a few weeks back while sorting through my moms photo collection. Others would call it a heap, but I'll call it a collection. The photo is of my grandmother in her youth with a friend (the one in white). I estimated the photo was taken sometime in the mid-1950's

When I found it there was considerable damage. I included the original just to show how much work had to be done. That, and I just have a thing for photo restoration. There's something annoyingly challenging but rewarding about it. Anyway I thought it was a classy photo and thought I'd share.

Also, after applying a spray effect to her face in Photoshop, I noticed something eerie:

Ummmm, what the....? Is that me? Think about it.

rollin'

we're playing again, tomorrow night, at El Mocambo. 11:30.
since the venue is across the street from our rehearsal space, nobody's driving.
therefore we're all partying for the first time.
having a license can be a burden.

a whole new world

this may be one of the only really funny things I ever do, and I'm cool with that.

golden boy

I may be late on this viral internet story, but I'm going to share it anyway. This is the story of Ted Williams - a man that was homeless up until being shared around the world via internet for his incredible "golden" voice.

I thought of just continuing through my day upon finding this, but found it too inspiring and important to simply cast aside. It simply goes to show that talent and imagination can still be found in today's bland world of gadgetry.

He now owns a house in Cleveland and is a broadcaster for the Cleveland Cavaliers. Watch the video below. I promise it will impress.