Mark Allen

My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-11-8)

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:35:00 -0800

My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-11-8):

For years I’ve been nursing an increasingly serious crush...

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:18:00 -0800

For years I’ve been nursing an increasingly serious crush on tiny houses like those from Tumbleweed. The past few weeks I’ve also devoured almost all of Henry David Thoreau’s work. I think we can see where this is all going to inevitably end up, right?

Ooooooh, pretty

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:03:40 -0800

Ooooooh, pretty

"He chose to be rich by making his wants few, and supplying them himself."

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:30:00 -0800

“He chose to be rich by making his wants few, and supplying them himself.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson, eulogizing Henry David Thoreau

I can’t really explain this.

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:23:49 -0800

I can’t really explain this.

"So where does that leave us? A 21-year-old wrote a blog post. A guy broke the corporate rules and..."

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:05:07 -0800

“So where does that leave us? A 21-year-old wrote a blog post. A guy broke the corporate rules and got fired. The internet (and the blogger!) is outraged. The name-calling continues, as everyone blames the big, bad, clueless, hopeless company. Mr. X will likely land somewhere less corporate, where speaking his mind is welcomed and his designs will see the light of internet day. But the web will still be full of arrogant, uninformed, polarizing, self-promoting, controversy-creating content that has ramifications no one wants to own up to. And consequently, the web will still be lacking in common courtesy, humility, and the admittance that most of us don’t know best. Which is sad, mostly because it’s true.”

- Joshua Blankenship - Creating Controversy for its own Sake (and How Humility is a Rare Bird Indeed These Days)

If you’ve been following the the Dustin Curtis / American Airlines design tempest in a teacup, Joshua’s post sums up my feelings exactly.

It took me about .5 seconds to decide I needed this...

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:03:14 -0800

It took me about .5 seconds to decide I needed this shirt.

danmeth:

We’ve got another T-Shirt for sale!
For all the ultra music geeks out there: A Beach Boys/Black Flag mashup. If you’ve always liked hardcore punk but you really dig the oldies (or vise-versa!), than this is the shirt for you. Click on over to Miss Wit T-Shirts to purchase one! There’s also this other Beach Boys s hirt for sale based on my Pop Cultural Chart!

FUN FACT: Both of these bands started out within 5 miles of each other in the outskirts of southern Los Angeles!

On November 20 I’ll be participating in the Suzan G. Komen...

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 23:19:00 -0800

On November 20 I’ll be participating in the Suzan G. Komen 3 day, 60 mile charity walk to fund breast cancer research along with my mom and sister. If you enjoy reading my blog, will you help sponsor me? It’s for a great cause; Breast cancer will affect 1 in 8 women during their lifetime, and is the second leading cause of cancer death in women.

Also there is a good chance there will be photos of me in some sort of embarrassing pink getup involving a tutu and a tiara just in case the “curing breast cancer” angle isn’t enough to persuade you.

Guided By Voices – Echos Myron Of all 5,000 songs Robert Pollard...

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:59:34 -0800

Guided By Voices – Echos Myron

Of all 5,000 songs Robert Pollard has written, I can say with about 85% confidence that this is my most favorite.

Replace crime/mystery dramas with reality tv and I’m just...

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:26:50 -0800

Replace crime/mystery dramas with reality tv and I’m just a cat away from becoming Julia Wertz.

I’m riding the N Judah outbound on a Saturday afternoon. A girl in her early twenties is...

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:38:00 -0800

I’m riding the N Judah outbound on a Saturday afternoon. A girl in her early twenties is quickly flipping through a series of postcards. She examines each card several times before she pulls one from the stack, smiles, and hands it to an older woman in front of her. The girl makes eye contact just long enough to complete the hand-off before diving back into her postcards and repeating the process.

As she works her way down the train car I can see that she’s passing out religious tracts. I’m surprised at how desperately I hope she hands one to me. I hope that maybe if she hands me the right card I will remember how I felt when I was her age. What it felt like to have answers, and what it felt like to be confident in those answers. What it felt like to be confident in anything. Maybe if she hands me the right card I will understand how it all stopped working. And just maybe she will hand me a card with the secret that suddenly makes it all start working again.

A teenage couple headed to the beach read their card and slip it into their tote bag. A dirty Haight St. panhandler stares at a card in the girl’s outstretched hand but refuses to take it from her, so she sets his card on the seat next to him. Someone who has to wear a suit and carry a briefcase on Saturday afternoons takes his card, reads it thoughtfully and hands it back to her. The train stops, and the girl hops off the train. I don’t get a card.

My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-11-1)

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:26:02 -0800

My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-11-1):

Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar - That Mitchell and Webb Look

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 23:57:37 -0700

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar - That Mitchell and Webb Look

femtowork

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 23:04:31 -0700

femtowork

f l u x

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 23:04:07 -0700

f l u x

Angel Conde

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 22:44:00 -0700

Angel Conde

Shawn Bradley, NBA Bitch I would pay money for a higher-quality...

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:49:09 -0700

Shawn Bradley, NBA Bitch

I would pay money for a higher-quality version of this. The only thing they missed was the time Bradley got body slammed.

Verizon’s official site for the Droid phone is so much...

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:33:00 -0700

Verizon’s official site for the Droid phone is so much less informative and exciting than this basic blog post from Gizmodo that it makes me wonder why Motorola and Google left marketing of the phone up to the carrier and didn’t do it themselves like Apple did. On the flip side, can you imagine how lame iPhone ads would be if AT&T was doing them?

I’m actually thinking about switching to the Droid when it comes out. Even though I love the iPhone more than I’ve ever loved any inanimate object, AT&T’s service in SF is so bad that I can’t rely on it at all as a phone.

Molina and Johnson — Almost Let You In From the upcoming album...

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:23:39 -0700

Molina and Johnson — Almost Let You In

From the upcoming album by Jason Molina (Songs:Ohia, Magnolia Electric Co.) and Will Johnson (Centro-matic).

This is how I approach life all too often.

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:35:00 -0700

This is how I approach life all too often.