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The Black Laser

City of Golden Shadow… or, Why Am I Still Reading This Book?

City of Golden Shadow… or, Why Am I Still Reading This Book?

April 3, 2015 |

Reading and Writing

After reading the second and third Expanse books back to back, I turned my attention to Tad Williams’ Otherland: City of Golden Shadow. The book had been in my mental queue for a long time, but for this reason or that I never actually read it. As much as I just wanted to read the next Expanse book, I felt like it was probably prudent to give the series a rest for a moment. Enter City of Golden Shadow.

Now, I am about three quarters of the way through it and I have no idea why I am still reading.

The book isn’t bad, exactly, but something about it isn’t grabbing me. Weighing in at about 800 pages, the commitment to reading is no little thing. But there’s something off and I can’t put my finger on it.

I feel like I’m just continuing on with it out of some sense of stubbornness. Like, maybe at some point the book will pick up and start being interesting? I’ve gotten this far, so I should probably just keep going? It has everything is should have to grab my attention: international intrigue! Nefarious plots! Parallel worlds! Science fictiony stuff! Egyptian gods! Murders! Explosions! Little girls who have weird friendships with elderly burn victims! Everything!

But, when it comes time to pull it out of my pocket on the train or get in bed and read, I’m overwhelmed with a feeling “meh”ness, you know? It’s weird.

Life is too short to read bad books. I know that much. There have been plenty of books I’ve gotten into and put down forever after a hundred pages. I’ve tried to read Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow like three times, and just put it down each time because it’s so full of itself trying to impress readers with its cleverness that it fills me with rage. Screw that book. Seriously.

City of Golden Shadow just isn’t bad enough to put down, though. I don’t actively hate it. It’s just not exciting enough, either, that I am ripping through it. It’s stuck in this mental/emotional neutral place for me where I can’t build up the required spite to put it down, but I also don’t give enough of a damn to want to see how it ends up. It’s the kind of book that I could get stuck “reading” for years because I just never spent any time with it. Or, at least, it could be that kind of book if I was the kind of person who could do that sort of thing.

I am also totally willing to posit that my feelings about the book might have absolutely nothing to do with the book itself, but possibly have everything to do with my mental state these days which we’ll diplomatically describe as “rough”. City of Golden Shadow, it might not be you; it might be me. It might still be you, though. I don’t know. Probably not.

At this point, I’m just going to finish the damn thing since I am getting pretty close to the end now, but the chances I read the following three books are pretty low. And that quickly, I’m in the market for something to read after this. Any suggestions?

> Continue reading...City of Golden Shadow… or, Why Am I Still Reading This Book?
The Clean Up

The Clean Up

March 30, 2015 |

Film & TV and My Work

In the summer of 2013, I cut “The Clean Up” with my good friend Jesse Allen. The film has done quite well on the festival circuit and was selected by Vice to be part of their short film series, “I’m Short, Not Stupid”.

I am pretty proud of this one. I think Jesse did an excellent job creating a succinct, tight short film that manages to make you laugh and make you think. A great short film is just one single idea examined simply with intelligence and style. “The Clean Up” has that. Plus, the edit was painless. It is nice to work with someone who you sync with on such an essential creative level that creating something isn’t like pulling teeth.

Watch the film. I think you’ll enjoy it.

> Continue reading...The Clean Up

Welcome to The Black Laser 3.0!

March 27, 2015 |

Thoughts

I am proud to announce the launch of the newest version of The Black Laser. If you’re not familiar with the site’s previous design, this is a significant overhaul from the previous, now-very-dated design.

No more fixed-width design!

Now scalable to a multitude of devices and resolutions!

No more white text on a black field!

New logo!

Still quite a lot of pink!

Expect some noodling to take place over the next few weeks as I settle into the new theme and identify things I’ve forgotten or missed. Such is the nature of these sorts of things.

For those of you interested, this is the first time I’ve used a child them in WordPress to customize. Previously, you had to manually edit a theme to make changes to it. That seems like a very direct, sensible way to alter something, and it is. However, if an update is released for the theme you’re using, all your edits are overwritten. That sucks. To avoid that business, you have to carefully update the updated theme to match and that is a royal pain in the butt with lots of opportunities for mistakes to creep in.

With a child theme (new since the last time I redesigned the site back in 2011), you create a dependent theme to which you make changes that references the original (parent) theme. That way you can update the base theme without losing your changes.

You don’t care at all about that, but I think it’s pretty neat and this is my website so deal.

If you want to read about my plans for the future here, just scroll down. Or click here. Whatever’s easiest for you. You’re probably a grown up.

I have some more stuff in store that I did not write about below so you will just have to wait and see!

> Continue reading...Welcome to The Black Laser 3.0!

Hello, The Black Laser? Are you there?

March 19, 2015 |

Writing

How’s it going, old friend? It’s been a while.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this site recently. The Black Laser has been sitting here, untouched, for more than a year and that seems like a real shame to me. Over the years I’ve put a lot of thought and effort into this site. It’s been a repository for my rambling thoughts, a place to promote whatever random projects I’ve been working on, a place where I shared crap from the internet that I was really enjoying.

But life and work conspired to distract me from keeping the pace up here. As I moved forward in my career, the amount of headspace at the end of the day to write and be creative diminished. Then I got married and the extra hours I used to spend staring at the new post page on the WordPress backend shifted to being spent with my super rad wife. These are non-problem problems, obviously. The root of the matter is that the hours I used to spend digging around and writing here are different now. I am different now. That’s what happens. I opened The Black Laser in November 2008 and here we are in March 2015 thinking about an old friend we haven’t spoken to in a while. It doesn’t need to be that way. The Black Laser isn’t dead. It has just been sleeping for a while.

Ultimately, it feels like a true tragedy to let The Black Laser drift off into some sort of pathetic oblivion, yet another untended to blog clogging up the tubes. I don’t want to do that. I like to think you don’t want to do that. So let’s not let that happen.

Here are the things I think need to change to breathe some new life into this place.

It needs a new design.

We’ve been using TBL2.0 since 2011. That is basically forever in internet time. Forever!! The theme is old and no longer standards-compliant. In 2011 when redesigning this place I was not at all worried about whether or not the site read well on a smart phone. Who read things on smart phones? Steve fucking Jobs? Not me. Well, that has changed completely. Everybody reads everything on their smart phones and tablets and thingies and thingers. Time to get with the now.

Also this white type on black background shit has got to go. What was I thinking?

The type and quality of posts need to change.

As fun as it was to post random music videos and whatever back in the day, there are better ways to get and share that sort of content now. Those posts were easy, cheap ways to keep the post count moving upward, and it was always nice to have a backlog of cool crap I could unleash at folks. But I don’t need that. In retrospect, those posts really watered down the effectiveness of this site as a device for sharing brain pieces. They are a nice little break from things you actually have to read, but only once in a while. They were too frequent. A crutch for not thinking of real content.

Additionally I no longer take very many photos. They were a big part of this site once, but there is little reason to stay set-up to share them easily since I no longer need to share things I am not creating. I might start taking photos again one day in the future, but not soon. I’ve got a lot of feelings about the photo thing which I am happy to explore in a later post in more depth. Not here.

A refocus on the purpose for The Black Laser.

As alluded above, The Black Laser serves a few real purposes.

  1. To keep me writing.
  2. As a sort of public journal.
  3. To share the things I am working on.

These have always been the backbone of the site, even when I didn’t have much to share in any of the categories. This is the content I want to focus on. While thinking about the future of this site, I’ve been calling TBL3.0 the TL;DR version of the site: lots of text, way fewer videos and filler posts, fewer posts in general, but (hopefully) higher quality in the stuff I do post. More words! Better posts! Surprises! It is going to be super great.

The Black Laser makes me feel good. Time spent making things here never feels poorly spent. Most of the quiet times of the past 6 and a half years were spent thinking of things to share. That is a lot of time over a lot of years. And I finally feel ready to come back to it and fill your eyeballs with my words. No, that’s not quite right. “Fill” is too passive of a verb.

I am going to force my words into your brain and you are going to love it.

> Continue reading...Hello, The Black Laser? Are you there?

Sea Pig

December 20, 2013 |

Film & TV and My Work

About a million years ago (or like a year a half ago), I had the pleasure of editing the film you see above. Now that it’s gone through the festival circuit—and won quite a few awards—it is available to view online.

Look at it! It’s good! And not work safe AT ALL. Spoiler alert: boobs.

Also, try and watch it fullscreen. It will be so much better.

> Continue reading...Sea Pig

Jan Roth’s “Einunzwanzig”

December 18, 2013 |

Music and Music Videos

Laureen at Sinnbus e-mailed me this morning, as she does about once a week, about the latest offerings and promos from Sinnbus, the label she works for. I almost never click the links in her e-mails, which doesn’t make sense because every time I have clicked, I like what I see. Case in point above. The music is lovely and the edit is spot on. This is a perfect little music video.

I don’t know who Jan Roth is or what he likes to eat for breakfast. I don’t know his mother’s name and I don’t know if he is a dog person or a cat person. What I do know is that he’s made something I like a lot. So there you have it. Check it out.

> Continue reading...Jan Roth’s “Einunzwanzig”

A Letter to the Hare Krishnas at Union Square

November 14, 2013 |

Letters and Writing

Dear Hare Krishnas hanging out on the southern end of Union Square,

SHUT THE FUCK UP!

You assholes have been making a scene there for months and you’re driving god damned crazy. I’ve been counting down the days until the holiday market set up and pushed you and your cymbals and your chanting and your “good vibes” out. But, just two days ago, as my patience waned perilously thin, those characteristic red and white tents started popping up.

Relief! Finally, no more hippie throngs filling up the park, creating a giant, noisy roadblock by the entrance to the subway! I would have respite until the weather wasn’t so cold!

And then I stepped down into the station, and there you were making noise and blocking traffic like a bunch of self-centered assholes. No one cares about your message. No one likes you. Go away forever.

Warmest regards,

The Black Laser.

> Continue reading...A Letter to the Hare Krishnas at Union Square