Breakfast of champions...

muxtape ain't got nothin on this...

Eric Shiveley...filmmaker and winner of the best composer award from the Jackson Hole Film Festival...has his award winning soundtrack available on Fuzz.com...

wha???...I know...I never heard of it either...so I did some digging and found out you can make cool mixtapes...at least a reasonable digital facsimile...and then embed them on your blog...great...another new toy...here ya go...



I read the fine print...these will only stay up for 15 days...so...enjoy it while it lasts...

our word of the week...

egoism...

an ethical theory that treats self-interest as the foundation of morality.

a noun...often confused with

egotism...

the practice of talking and thinking about oneself excessively because of an undue sense of self-importance

"homework everyday..."

"i'm son of sam...or could i be gilmore..."

the new jezebels...i like the sound of it...

ms breslin just coined a phrase for me...unless I hear otherwise...she gets credit for...The New Jezebels...as she uses it, it's more than just a cool band name...

"The New Jezebels act like the girl in "The Exorcist," their heads forever spinning because they can't make up their minds if they want to spend all their time trashing men, whining about how oppressed they are by magazines, or blogging about how many times they got fucked last night--so they end up doing all three at the same time. That'd leave men kind of... confused, wouldn't it?"

she goes on...

"Anything's better than listening to the endless stream of static coming from the mouths of 21st century women who can't decide if they're feminists or freaks."

it helps that the context for her position is...a quick and on point analysis of one of my favorite shows...Mad Men...ms scribe just doesn't get it...

via The Constant Siege...

I love colorado in the summertime...

a new toy...

great...just what i was looking for...a new way to tell you all about my reading list...

Shelfari: Book reviews on your book blog

take this book for instance...


it's more of a reference manual than a reading experience...i am enjoying it...especially seeing terms and slang that i grew up with in military school still in use...and the amusing new phrases coming out of recent combat operations...

for instance...here's an oldie...but a goodie...

"Oxygen thief: A worthless person. ('PFC Bummer is a fucking oxygen thief'.)"

and...another great example of how the innernets have infiltrated nearly everywhere...

"Four-Oh-Four (404): A geek term used by younger soldiers meaning the website is not available. Four-oh-four means anything from 'not working' to 'not there mentally."

so...while I haven't read every word of it...cover to cover...it is an excellent resource to share the shelf with the Roget's, Webster's, and Strunk and White...

i do realize that my active reading list is heavy on non-fiction...that's because i'm at the start of what i see as a long haul of writing...and other fiction just distracts me...

rooster in the hen house...

and then...

The loverly wife...

gettin some...

MTV used to be smart...WHA???!!!

whoda thunk...



Via Jeff B at Syntax of Things...

ms scribe has a blog...

although you wouldn't know it by how infrequently she posts...twice this year...she thinks she has nothing to say...she thinks she can't write...everyday she's got a new story to tell me...about what went down that day...i constantly tell her...you should put that on your blog...and another day passes...stories untold...

and since she's the only regular reader i've got...maybe she'll get the messeage...i hope so...i would love to add her to my list of feeds...

one hot mess...

our word of the week...

Autophagia...

a mental disorder in which one is compelled to inflict pain upon oneself by biting and/or devouring portions of one's body. It is sometimes caused by severe sexual anxiety, sometimes combined with schizophrenia.

everyone but you...and me...

just like anywhere else...denver has it's share of hipsters, wannabes and bullshit artists...fortunately, there are people here that...do the work...hello...last weekend I got a chance to meet one such local hero...Eric Shiveley...and see his latest work...everyone but you...which is about...doing the work...no matter what...it is an excellent primer for any wretched soul who thinks they want to make a living creating...stuff...Eric and I traded emails tonight about his film...

is there any distinction between your work as a musician and your work as a filmmaker...

It's pretty much the same. You do things in little pieces, then put it all together and find out you're a poor planner. So you adjust it all until it works. With songs you try to build a song around a couple pretty moments, and with movies I always heard you have your pivotal scenes, and 90% of the work is spacing those out and not boring the audience between them.

With songs, the music is the canvas, and you drop in whatever words feel natural. When I made the movie I wrote a ton of narrative, then threw out most of it once I dropped in the pretty scenery and let that tell the story.

you choose some pretty scenery...that's got to be my favorite part of the state...

Thanks. If you live here, all you have to do is wait and have a camera.

is solitude an important part of your creative process...

I hate working alone. There's nothing fun about it, except feeling like you accomplished something by yourself. I'd guess most painters or writers do work alone. Maybe some people enjoy the process. I don't like any part of it except being done and playing Xbox.

the press likes to refer to you as eric shiveley...struggling artist...are you tired of that yet?

The movie pretty much shows a "struggling artist" I guess, and that's the joke I make about myself all through it, so as long as I'm getting press I won't complain.

But I hoped some people would see the movie and say, "Wow, great movie, too bad the guy's a nobody and he'll never get anywhere," without realizing it's the music and writing of this nobody driving the whole thing.

And the movie shows I haven't even launched my music into the universe yet, so I really shouldn't have gotten anywhere yet. My goal was to wait until I hopefully have an absolute knockout of an album together. That's coming right after I finish this game of Half-Life2. And this ice cream.

what flavor...and...a motif throughout your movie is a set of rules...rule#1 is...have a plan...what's the plan for you and EBY?

French Vanilla (it went on the apple pie I just finished).

The end of my plan was to get the movie in one really good festival. Jackson Hole is about as good as you can hope for if you're a nobody with a two hour movie. Throw in the fact it was made with a cheap camcorder and the chances of getting in are about 0.14%

But there's this mesmerizing hippie chick singer down here in the valley named Katey Sleeveless. My next work is doing a video for her. We're going to film her goats and cows and chickens.



excellent...good luck with that...just one last question...one of my favorite parts of your film is when you rip into denver's hipster culture...are there any deserving names you forgot to mention?

Oh man I can't touch that. Of the people who are sent to an ugly brown death -- their effigies anyway -- I was actually very careful to pick people I'd have no problem facing in person for what they're said or done. Nick from DeVotchKa actually talked me into removing a joke about Conor Oberst. Because Nick has met him and says he's very genuine and nice. The stuff I left in are people who sell themselves as huge supporters of independents, but who really don't care about anything but their bottom line. Or who shouldn't be giving advice to anyone on how to get better.

But okay, anyone at 1190 who passed over my last album can suck my balls. They never gave it a single spin in their open programming time, and it stomped the living shit out of most of the local stuff they were playing at the time. Okay that actually felt pretty good.