I havn’t posted about the podcast ( The Penny Jam ) lately, so check out this little gem that we filmed a few weeks ago. And stay tuned for our upcoming episodes, Eric John Kaiser in a Yarn store called Yarnia, Sleep on a rooftop and Laura Gibson at OMSI. Now I present you with Dirty Mittens performing their song “Time Forgiver” at Old Portland Hardware.
Well, it’s actually been up for about a month now, but for the sake of documentation and random folks reading this, my new project “The Penny Jam” is viewable at www.thepennyjam.com 
This is a project Sean and I have been talking about for a while and as planned we shot our first episode at the beginning of March. Essentially The Penny Jam is a weekly video podcast where we have a different band play in a different location each week. It’s not an entirely original idea, but then again what is, everybody has a video podcast these days. Okay maybe not but I think that the main distinguishing factors of this project are 1) the fact that we are promoting Portland music and shooting in Portland locations 2) we’re focusing on keeping the production value really high.
Our sound engineer James Jacobsen is key in maintaining this quality - and as Sean once said to me, “as long as the audio is good people will forgive just about anything visually,” (very rough paraphrase.) So far the sound has been great and it is impressive to see James adapt to various unconventional locations (furniture store, gym, dollar store) but thankfully there is nothing to hide, I’m stoked about the video quality as well.
We’re hot on the toes (as opposed to heels) of pitchfork.tv launching about a month before them. We are not putting out nearly the quantity they are, but then again we aren’t in it for the money. I’m actually a big fan of the pacing so far, one shoot per week doesn’t interfere with life or work and we still manage to put out something pretty rad. I’ve watched a few episodes on Pitchfork TV so far and it is pretty cool, I’m curious to see how they’ll mix it up. I really hope that they keep the locations fresh - with the high production value I pray they don’t restrict themselves to sound stages. Today I watched a couple songs from the series “Don’t Look Down” featuring The Thermals from here in Portland. It was a pretty dope set, and I like the idea of a rooftop series. It would be great to see them exploring different NYC rooftops, so again, just hoping they don’t restrict themselves to THAT one roof, even though it is a beauty. Apparently Pitchfork’s attempts are working though, I see that the Radiohead song “Bangers and Mash” that was up on the main page yesterday is on the front page of Digg today.
Yeah, but enough of that for the moment, if you are interested in this live video thing, check out The Penny Jam and represent Portland style.
My friend Dave Whitney just moved away from Portland and a few days before he left he asked me to design a tattoo for him. He already decided that he wanted an anchor with the word “Portland” somehow incorporated, possibly written in rope or something. After some experimentation I realized it would be pretty rad to incorporate the Portland sign that adorns the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.
Here are the initial photoshop mockups:
And my final version, all simplified for the sake of tattooing:
Overall it came out pretty close, though it got shaded instead of a solid infill, but still looks damn good. It would have been cool to retain the typography from the Portland sign but I can understand how it would be tough to do specific typefaces with a tattoo gun.
After today I’m pretty sure I work with the smartest people in the world, at least when they are making things like this:
When I was leaving work this afternoon I was presented with this awesome embroidered shirt for our company’s bowling team, part of Portland Ad League Bowling. The name of our team is “Bowl Job.” Now I just need to get my name embroidered onto the front.
I love how subtle this is, it leaves a lot to the imagination. I think the bowling pin is supposed to be some sort of phallic symbol.
I give Karen full credit for making this awesome design and I probably owe her a beer or something. It’s been three weeks since I rolled and I’m anxious to try out the new ball I bought the other day at an estate sale.
Only five bucks including the case - it’s a red and black marbled Brunswick, the finger holes actually fit me well. I’m hoping the ball works out because seriously, how awesome would it be to step into the alley with your own ball.
The only downside of Thursday bowling is missing out on dMob, which is in North Portland at a bar called Vendetta. No regrets though, I choose bowling, drinking and shmoozing over simply drinking and shmoozing. It’s simple mathematics really.
