Dave Carter is the creator of Psychotown and various other short, brilliant, animations. He is also a good friend of mine and one of the most kick ass people I know. I can guarantee that after an hour with Dave you will be a more interesting person… and you will probably be drunk and most likely be talking with complete strangers, or you’ll be in jail, or you might be in jail talking to complete strangers… or you might just be sitting drinking your beer and getting your mind blown off by one of Dave’s brilliantly honest observations about creativity. After an hour and a half you might be scouting locations for the goth horror action flick that the two of you just penned on a bunch of bar napkins.

I met Dave randomly in Moscow and we hung out for two hours before it came up that he was deaf (you would never know it, nor does it seem to matter at all when you’re with him). He doesn’t do any sign language he just reads lips about as well as I can hear. Dustin, Sara, Dave and I ran around in Moscow and St. Petersburg for about 8 days, going to museums (I almost cried in the Hermitage… I don’t cry… I punch people that cry), and exploring, and making weird travel videos.

I’m really hoping that we both get our acts together one day and are able to work on something together. He is a creative wrecking ball in the best possible way and a genius stop-motion animator. His Psychotown series was featured this past year in Mike Judge’s Animation Show and I guarantee his best work has yet to come.  Take a look at his site

This is outstanding… hopefully I’ll have time to write about it later.  Here’s the quick and dirty from vimeo.

An ambiguous animation painted on public walls.  Made in Buenos Aires and in Baden (fantoche)

My flight got into NYC on Saturday at around 4 and by 7 I was sitting at a table with some of my best friends eating thin crust pumpkin pizza. I was planning on leaving for Providence at 11am on Sunday, but wasn’t about to take it easy my one night in NY. It was Avra’s birthday and Dusty brought his camera out… so a lot of pictures were taken.  (Photos by Dustin)

I did leave at 11 for Providence, 11pm… after watching both football games and eating 2 bagels and a cheesesteak.

Animal Collective just released a new album called Merriweather Post Pavilion… and it’s pretty good.  I’ve only listened to the CD a couple times through and I’m pretty sure that it will stay in the rotation for a while.  I thought I was losing interest in the Animal Collective sound but now I think I was just a bit bored of the old tunes.  The beginning few tracks of this album are especially awesome, and I think the album as a whole will grow on me for a while too.

I’m not sure if you can tell, but I’m slightly disappointed that they didn’t come out with something smashingly original and all over the place.  I thought they had the potential to really let it go, and maybe they do, but the new release is solid and well worth a listen or ten.

Here’s a little sample… (Track 2 - My Girls)

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I took four production classes this past semester, which roughly equates to about 120 days with an average of 5 hours of sleep, 3 cups of coffee, 4 hours of class, half an aderrol, 3 beers, one shot of jamison, 2 bad conversations, 3 good ones, 2 miles of walking through campus while thinking 1.5 times about how much older you are then the girl walking past you, 1 bagel, and two thirds of a big fat grin on your face realizing that you get to spend the next 7 hours working on whatever it is you want for project due in 1.7 days.  Break it down, and it’s a pretty good life, most things considered.

(Changing tense for effect)

I like all of my classes, which I feel must be rare.  One class in particular is not at all what I expected.  Class with Ed.  I’m flower furious that I didn’t record one of our classes.  It would be gold.  Ed is soft spoken but unfiltered, which is a pretty great way to be.  Then there are 5 of us in the class, not including Ed.  Myself, Boche, Seira, Jacob, and Jake (all of which are deserving of their own post here).  Here is a short made up potential class discussion…

Jake: (gasping for air) Sorry I’m late.

Ed: Oh, that’s… ok.

Jake: (sits) the mustache is looking pretty amazing this week.

Me: Yeah… you waxing that thing?

Boche: No way… just keep twisting and it stays.  Does anyone want some apple? (takes out a knife and makes 7 perfect slices and puts them in the middle of the table)

(Everyone takes a piece)

Ed: These are great…  There is a piece by a woman… I forget her name… she made a bunch of recordings of people eating apples and then mixed them together into this apple eating thing and synched them to video of a girl chewing… it’s strange, but it works really well.

Jacob: So the chewing gets all up in your ears and wet sounding?

Ed: Yeah… kinda, yeah.  It does, it’s pretty gross, but great.

Seira: Oh Yeah… that was my aunt!

It’s kinda like that, but way better.  The class was great.  I’ve learned a hell of a lot from Ed.  He stresses different aspects in pieces that I often don’t think about.  Take a look at his site, it might take a little while but it is worth it.

Last fall I started a graduate program at Brown University in Providence, RI.  The name of my program is MEME (multimedia and electronic music experiments) and it has one of the worst websites I have ever had to experience in my life.  It is a five year Ph.D program, so it’s looking like I’m going to be held up in this frozen little corner of the country for quite some time.

Instead of complain about the many obvious reasons why Providence is inferior to NYC (my home for the last 4 years) I would like to point out some of its advantages… but I can’t.  Strangely, I am enjoying it and I’m glad to have made the decision to go back to school.  It’s challenging and I’m finally experimenting again.  I’m enjoying work rather then dreading it.  Finally, eight years late, I understand that my favorite thing to do is experiment and that school is the easiest place to do just that.

This is a blurb I wrote for Svea Vikander’s Lifelines Blog, I decided to repost it here… I’m not sure why.

I have a scar on my arm that looks a lot like the scar Frankenstein has on his forehead. It’s on my right arm and people tend to notice it a lot. Some people really have a tough time with it, especially after I show them the small scar on the other side of my arm where the bone broke through my skin. I like my scar, it’s been with me for half my life now and I wouldn’t give it up if I could.

I got my scar playing street hockey in the church parking lot. I knew immediately that my arm was fucked. I’d broken my left arm twice before and was pretty familiar with the sensation.

I was hooked from behind and came down with my full weight on the radius and ulna (the two bones in your forearm). The ulna shattered and the radius snapped and popped out of the bottom of my arm.

I also landed on the ball so everyone was yelling at me to get up so the game could continue. When I rolled over the middle knuckle of my right hand was touching my upper forearm so that my hand and part of my wrist were going the wrong way. One of my teammates puked. It took me a couple minutes to really feel the pain, but when I did I screamed bloody murder until I was in the ambulance.

The doctor had to go through the top of my arm (surgery 1) to reconstruct the bones and they put all kinds of metal plates and screws in there to get everything to come back together. Five months later they had to take most of the hardware out so that my bones would grow properly (surgery 2). After the bones were healed they had to get the rest of the stuff out (surgery 3).

The really weird thing is that the scar shouldn’t be as bad (good) as it is. The surgeon I had really screwed up. In addition to putting tendons and muscles in the wrong place he couldn’t follow the initial incision he made so with each surgery the scar grew. I didn’t realize that is was a shit job until a shocked doctor took a look at it a few years ago.

I am really bad at arm wrestling with my right arm. My grip is significantly better with my left arm. I have no feeling in part of my wrist and some of my hand. I have to constantly pluck hairs out of my scar to keep it presentable. And I often lie and tell people it is a wound received in a knife fight.

The best part is that my dad recently sent me an article about the doctor that worked on my arm. He has been suspended from practicing, and the article citied specifically:

“He is no longer allowed to operate on patients 16 and younger and can not perform hand and wrist surgeries.”

Ha. I put the link to the whole article below.

The Article