The Jack Noodle Journal

Good morning. Yes, I guess it is a good morning. The first 10 minutes of it have been okay. Yesterday was an amazing morning. It was so nice out. The sun was out, the air was crisp. Gosh, I hopped right out of bed and seized the day. I could have waited at the bus stop all day it was so pleasant.

I woke up nicely this morning, but it doesn’t seem to be as amazing of a morning as yesterday. It’s a tad gray out right now. I think we might be getting some rain today also. I’ll probably be in doors during the rain so that is fine.

I have been doing more research on the advertising industry again this week. I’m thinking that applying to get my MFA in advertising may be the way I am going to go. I love this advertising crap. I have been borrowing issues of the magazine Adweek from work and have been reading them from cover to cover while on the bus.
I also have been looking at art director job openings to see what people are looking for in the position.

K’s spring break continues on. I think she is getting a cold though, which is not what someone should get while relaxing on their spring break. I probably should have taken a day or two off so that we could have done something for her break. That would have been fun. There are still a number of days left of spring break, so there is still time to shake things up.

I have been meaning to go and see the movie “V is for Vendetta”, but haven’t yet. The gang has been trying to work it out but haven’t been able to so far. Paying full price for it at the movie theater isn’t something I want to do. It’s hard to remember to go during the day for the cheaper ticket prices. Maybe we’ll go this weekend. If not, I can always rent it when it comes out.

March is almost over isn’t it? Dang. April is almost here. We have got to get our tax crap in order. I am really dreading taxes this year.

Hey happy birthday pops. How old is the guy now? 57.
K and I went and celebrated with the family yesterday in good ole Beavercreek.

Yes, Beavercreek. Land of my birth. Actually land of my raising. I was born in Portland.
Beavercreek is slowly but surely filling up with houses. Back in the day, 25 years or so ago, there was some sort of decree that there couldn’t be more than one house per five acres out there in the hood. I guess that decree is no more. There are 3 McMansions now in the field by our house that use to only be a cow pasture.
Oh well. I guess everything is bound to become Sunnyside and Clackamas before too long.

There is this disgusting Clackamas neighborhood that now mysteriously popped up next to the Oregon City High School campus (will always be Moss to me). I don’t understand the thinking that goes into deciding you want to live in a crowded brand new village of McMansions. I guess with us living in beautiful SE, off of Belmont where everything is at least 50 years old, that you forget that sprawl is still continuing in other parts of the World.

I need to start taking photos again and post them up here. I’ve had the photo bug lately.

Time to head off to another week of work.

K has spring-break this week so she is loving it.

Hey there. It’s been pretty quiet here at the Noodle Compound this week. Not too much going down. It has been a nice first week of spring. Still some rain showers though. It’s kind of cloudy right now as I look out the front room windows.

I bought tickets today to see the Nine Inch Nails concert at the Clark County Amphitheater on May 27th. Yeah, pretty crazy. I was hemming and hawing about it briefly. I think it will be a fun show. Bauhaus and TV on the Radio will be opening for NIN. I grew up with Bauhaus playing as the soundtrack to the movie of my life, so it will be SO awesome to see them live. TV on the Radio sweetens the deal because I have been listening to their CD almost nonstop these last 2 weeks. This will be the third time I have seen Nine Inch Nails play live. Always an Earth shaking experience.

I had a couple of thoughts about getting older and going to see giant shows at amphitheaters. K has reassured me that even though we will look like some of these kids parents at the show, there will be older people than us there. I’m being a little silly about that. We haven’t reached the Rolling Stones concert goer age yet. I did have the chance to buy tickets more towards the front this morning online, but when I saw that the 2 tickets together cost $120, the adult in me quickly went to the cheaper tickets a bit further away from the stage. The younger, more excited NIN fan in me from a few years ago would have probably paid $200 for front row tickets. K also commented that she probably wouldn’t have been able to see from that more expensive spot because everyone would have been standing in her way.

It should be a good time. I’m sure I’ll comment more on it when the date gets closer.

We have been keeping the Netflix machine running here and have been watching quite a few movies. Recent views include “History of Violence”, “Jarhead”, “Junebug”, “Thumbsucker” and “Walk the Line”. All of them have been pretty good. I think my favorite out of those would have to be Junebug. We watched that when we were down at the beach last weekend.

We have been sitting on the DVD “Edvard Munch” this week. We have only made it through the first of it’s three hours. I am quite fascinated with Edvard Munch and want to know about the man, so the DVD has been good for me to watch. If you don’t care to learn about Edvard Munch’s life then this DVD will be, as we said last night to friends, “Disturbing and boring”. We’ll probably finish watching it today or tomorrow. It was funny when we first started watching it, we didn’t know that our English subtitles were off. There is a voice over narrator to the movie speaking English and everyone else on the DVD speaks Norwegian. It took 17 minutes for us to figure out that not being able to understand what the people were saying wasn’t a National Geographicesque feature of the film.

Between Netflix viewings we have been watching season 5, the last season of “Six Feet Under”. It is so freaking good. Our friend Alison’s Mother recorded the whole season for Alison on VHS, and now we are borrowing them. Those Six Feet Under episodes are so bleak and depressing. I can’t watch more than 2 of them at a time or I start to feel insane. SO good though! I think I am going to be sad when we watch the final episode and there are none left.

Hey there all. Yes, I am so happy. The first day of Spring is finally here! I am glad that winter has left us. Once again winter, you were such a lame visitor.

K and I had a pleasant weekend. We went over to the coast on Friday night and stayed until Sunday night. Phillip and Abby came also. K has a friend at work who’s family has a beach house and we were able to rent that out. The house was in Waldport. Waldport is down by Newport on the way to Yachats. All great coastal Oregon towns. The weather was great the whole weekend. It rained pretty hard on saturday night but we were inside by that time sitting next to the warm wood stove.

It was a great weekend to be at the ocean. There weren’t very many people clogging up the beach. The weekend before spring break starts up must be the time to go. The beach by the house was great for letting the dogs off leash to run around.

The beach house was pretty cool. It will be fun to get the whole gang down there soon. It’s charming and rustic. Not rustic in a log cabin way, rustic in a funky beach house way. What?

Our car headlights are out and we’ve been driving around at night with our brights on. The coastal villagers were very good about letting us know or high beams were on by constantly shooting their high beams in our face. People must not notice our brights are on here in the city because they don’t flash us.

A cool thing about the coastal villagers was that there were quite a few of them at a couple of spots along highway 101 protesting the war. They had their “honk if you hate the war” and “he lied and they died” signs out. We gave them some toots on the horn. The coastal villager numbers didn’t match the 10,000 of our Portland protesters, but hooray for them taking it to the streets. It makes me feel better about Oregon to see that even some of the red areas of our state are finally seeing that this war wasn’t such a great idea and that the leadership of our country may be a tad wacky.

This Iraq war has been going on for 3 years now! Dang. Gosh folks, it just keeps get worse over there doesn’t it? I don’t know.

Yes staring at the sea, staring at the sand has gotten me refocused and centered again. I’m nice and relaxed. I was awfully sleepy at work though today.

I had a couple of weird dreams last night (a few moments ago). I blame a certain giant shoe company who’s photographs of garments weren’t working quite right for me this week at work. My first dream was that I was working on a digital photograph of some machine and I had to make the right decision about which antenna to crop out of the shot. I of course picked the wrong one and the client acted like I was a total moron for not know what antenna was which. The second dream I had was that I was working on a photograph of a Whopper for Burger King. That was going wrong for some reason also. I woke up hungry after that dream. Yes, this is what I dream about. Dreams about work? That hasn’t happened in a while. The last bad dreams of that genre I had while I was still in school.

K put season one of “21 Jumpstreet” on our Netflix que. We watched the first disc last night. Boy oh boy was that pilot episode bad. Bad story, bad acting, bad production, horrible music and bad clothing. It was awesome. Johnny Depp looks like a little baby in it. I think we need to skip forward to the season 3 DVDs. I remember that show being so good at one point. Remember that episode where Johnny goes deep undercover to infiltrate that prison and then he gets stuck in there? I think they played that “Can’t Find My Way Home” song in it. Who was that by? House of Lords? I think that was one of the early Richard Grieco episodes also.

I have to get up earlier for these morning, before work posts. I get in too much of a hurry and feel like I’m running late the whole time.

Good morning ye all. I just had to get up this morning and write in these pages. I haven’t been updating as often as I should. I am a very bad boy. Have you been noticing that it has been getting light earlier in the mornings? That means the days are getting longer and Spring is coming!

How has it been going for you? This week has been pretty good so far. The whole go to work, go back home, watch TV thing is in full swing. Last night we went over to Seth and Alicia’s and had a chili dinner. That was very tasty.

You will all be happy to know that I have purchased the Goldfrapp “Supernature” deluxe CD/DVD that I went off the deep end about the other day. I found it at store #3. Borders books and music downtown. I got it on my way home from work yesterday. It was worth the wait. The DVD is way slick and nicely produced. I can’t wait to listen to the CD on my headphones today at work.

I have been continuing my investigations and pondering about the advertising industry. Do I want to get into advertising? The whole idea of getting a MFA in Advertising all online is an interesting one. The school has been calling and emailing me inquiring about my inquiry. I’m going to get the Academy of Art University to send me some more information in the mail about their online program. I think it is a lot of money to go there. I wonder if the Man would see fit to give me more student loans? Eh we’ll see. I need to do some more research and get everything figured out. I would like to be able to write at least a page and a half about my strategies before I act on anything.

I think that we might try and get the heck out of town this weekend. I need to see the ocean and get focused.

Good morning to you! Hey we have Sun right now. Ah, that is so nice. What in the World is up with the snow we had this week? Winter just doesn’t want to give up yet I guess. Sure, we didn’t get much of an accumulation here at the Noodle Compound, but it was kind of strange standing at the bus stop in March and watching the snow fall. Hopefully that will be the end of it. I know I have said it here before, but I am definitely ready for the Summer. I am done with these Winter blues.

The weekend is here kids. Any big plans? Not too much going down here this weekend. I’m sure something fun will turn up though. I think that K and I should take this stinky dogs for a walk today before the Sun goes away.

I’m going to try and not do any drinking this weekend. Wait a second Noodle. That’s a loaded sentence for the journal. Is a drinking problem something you want to talk about here on this family friendly blog? No there’s not a problem, and no that’s not denial. I just have been doing a lot of drinking over the last few weekends and I have a feeling that I would feel better on Monday if I just pulled it in a little bit. We are part of a crew that is big on the drinking scene and I am starting to feel my age calling for a new pastime. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

On Thursday night I went to Everyday Music over on Sandy to buy that Goldfrapp CD that I talked about here a few days ago. I found it to be an interesting bit of brick and mortar shopping. If you’ll remember I had decided that I wasn’t going to buy the album over iTunes because I wanted to test out that whole go to the record store and buy a CD thing again. I have bought 6 albums already this year and they have all been purchased through iTunes. I also wanted the CD deluxe version that came with a DVD included.

I get to the store and it’s going pretty well. I browsed through some CDs and actually found a few new releases that I didn’t know had come out. When I finally get to the Goldfrapp CDs, I find that they don’t have that CD/DVD version of Supernature that I came to the store for. They had several copies of the CD though which was good, but it was the same thing that I could have purchased from iTunes for cheaper.

“What’s this?” I wonder to myself. I go up to the front to ask the employees if they had the CD/DVD version of Supernature. To their credit, the store clerks weren’t jerks and didn’t act snobby to me for asking a question. They didn’t know what I was talking about though.

They said something like “Uh, I don’t think there is a CD/DVD version”. The guy jumps on the computer behind the counter and says, “Looks like there is a 5.1 digital stereo DVD version”.

I was trying not to pull this card but said, “Well I was on Amazon and found a version of the CD released with a DVD that has a bunch of music videos and interviews on it. Maybe that’s just a only in Europe thing”.

Then I am assuming that the clerk maneuvered the computer to Amazon where he found what I was talking about.
“Yeah, here it is. That’s pretty cool. We don’t have it though”.

I left the store without buying anything.

Maybe Goldfrapp isn’t super popular yet here in Portland to warrant stocking every single version of the release? Maybe my experiment is pertinent though because I wasn’t after a top 40 album. I’m still going to buy the CD/DVD version of Supernature in a brick and mortar store. The experiment will continue and I will see how many places I have to go to.

Retail CD stores are in trouble. There are several chains that we all visited and enjoyed during our youth like Tower Records and Musicland that are on their death beds. I think too easy of a target is put on those crazy college kids who download music for free. Sure that is part of the problem, but I think the real problem is that these record stores can’t possibly stock every item that today’s wired and informed consumer could want. The music consumer today can go to the internet and buy something as obscure as a CD with Himalayan Song birds on it. Why would a CD store have 10 CD/DVD versions of Supernature in stock if I was the only one that was going to buy it? The brick and mortar stores of the olden days can only do so much for the hyper freedom of choice that we as consumers enjoy in today’s market. How many customers are out there like me that purposefully went the legal route to purchase their music and have found that these stores are now out of date?

To the record companies credit, they did entice my legal purchase by creating a product that holds more value to me as a physical object than a download. They need to keep adding value to their products to keep us buying it. Cool packaging, CD booklets that are actually works of art instead of squares of paper with one photo, and DVD extras are nice. Having good bands and music on their lineup would also be a good start. Record companies are starting to do this and it’s pretty cool. I think what we are going to start to see them do is only create these deluxe versions and get rid of all of the other CD versions. If a customer doesn’t want a DVD or cool packaging, then they will have to download the non-deluxe version from a legal source like iTunes. If this model was in effect and the Goldfrapp CD/DVD was the only version available at Everyday, then they would have had a sale.

It’s a new and exciting marketplace now and I think it is going to be cool to watch the dinosaurs struggle to adapt to a new mode of thinking. It’s not just the music industry. A number of other businesses in today’s World are becoming increasingly irrelevant. I love it.

Oh man, I’ve got to go. I have to get to work on some chores before K gets home and finds out all have done this morning is typed in the journal and drank coffee.

K is out on a secret mission right now that I can’t speak of. I don’t want the powers that be to intercept this message and foil her attempts.

It was slow at the office today so I finished up what I was working on and went home. Now I am chillin’ and watching Perry Mason. I didn’t mind heading home. A nice afternoon off is just what the doctor ordered. I feel a nap coming on.

When I went to work this morning, I decided to try an experiment to not view any news stories the whole day. I have been paying too much attention to the news lately. I’ve been listening to NPR for most of the time I’m at work during the day. The constant news updates start to wear you down on a subconscious level I think. All the news has been depressing over the last few months. There’s not much good news being reported. I still haven’t been updated on current events yet today and it feels great. There isn’t any reason to constantly stay up to the minute with the news. I think somewhere along the line we all bought into the notion that if you aren’t keeping up to date with World events then you are being a bad citizen. I think it is important to be knowledgeable and informed so that one can make intelligent decisions in life, but this 24 hour news cycle is just too much. Most of the content that is being called news these days is really just entertainment and fluff.

Damn it! I just noticed that a weather winter storm warning was scrolling across the bottom of the Mason broadcast. Does that count as news? See, it is almost impossible to stay away from the news. I know, I could keep the TV off.

One of my good friends recently received the news that she was accepted to a graduate school program in Baltimore. She will be going for a MFA in Imaging and Digital Arts. The program looks pretty cool. My friend is excited about going. Talking about it has started me thinking again about if I want to go to graduate school or not.

One of the big stories that the Noodle Journal missed out on during my 2005 absence was my applying to graduate school at the University of Michigan. Yeah, it seems mildly crazy now because I was right in the middle of finishing up a heavy work load getting my BS at the Art Institute, thinking that I wanted to keep going, get my masters and get the school thing over with. I was interested then in getting a MS in HCI at the School of Information. I did all the application stuff, took my GRE tests and sent everything off. I even went out to Ann Arbor and visited the campus. Luckily I wasn’t accepted. Sure I was annoyed at not being accepted at the time, but now I can’t imagine what it would be like now if I was over there in that program. I’m still interested in human computer interaction but think that it would have been the wrong direction for my graduate work. For one thing, those cats are smart. I’m not sure I would have had the mental fortitude to keep with my studies.

It would have been nice to have entries in the Journal about that brief chapter. Dang me and my no typing in 2005!

My attitude towards education has been “education for educations sake”. I don’t really think about what job would I be able to get after going to such and such. Jobs come and go. Sure, I don’t think it hurts to be loaded up with degrees when looking for jobs, but I have heard of many people in the areas I have been interested in, being self taught. Getting a job really boils down to how well the person looking for the job sells themselves to the employer. My interest in continuing education would be to learn more about things and topics that I find interesting. I like feeling my brain get bigger and would like to keep studying.

The big thing I have been working on lately I guess has been figuring out what I am interested in. I think I am starting to get my interests into focus.

One thing concerning graduate programs that I hadn’t thought about until today is that it is possible to get a MFA by taking classes entirely online. That might be a good thing for this guy. I wouldn’t have to move to another state, and I could keep working. I was kind of examining the MFA in Advertising from the Academy of Art University. One could do the whole program from one’s couch! I’m thinking that the advertising program might touch most of the topics of interest to me currently. I think I want to be in advertising when I grow up. Maybe an art director or marketeer. We’ll see, it’s something to think about. I am currently reading, thinking and writing about some of the topics being taught at these places so I might as well get some credit for it. There is definitely no harm in investigating.

Hey I’m back. That writing at work experiment didn’t prove to be successful. I really need my full attention devoted to the journal when writing in it. Writing out hand written notes so I can remember what to talk about in the future works pretty well for me there. I have quite a stack of notes and lists of things to write and check out when not at work.

I have found my next CD purchase already. See, too much time with the headphones on! I don’t think I am going the iTunes route this time though. I need a physical CD. This one comes with a DVD that looks pretty good. My new favorite CD that I don’t own yet is “Supernature” by Goldfrapp. It came out today in the US. I guess we are 6 months behind the Europe release. I have been listening to samples and watching the videos on the internet. It seems poppy at first but if you get in there a bit deeper it’s quite sinister. It has those interesting sounds and beats that I am so fond of. These tunes seem a bit different than the earlier Goldfrapp stuff I have heard. From what I can tell so far from what I have heard this may be the first contender for the 2006 summer album! It is still only March though isn’t it?

Our Netflix viewing has been pretty fun. It’s a tad stressful because you have to keep watching movie after movie, you have to keep stuffing the DVDs back in the mailbox, and they keep coming back! You’ve got to keep them going fast so that you get your moneys worth at the end of the month. No, I’m just joking. It’s not stressful.

We finally saw a Netfix DVD last night that was worthy of a rave here in the journal. We watched “House of Sand and Fog” starring Jennifer Connelly and Ben Kingsley. It was a good one. It wasn’t a new release. I think it was released in 2003. Man oh man, it wasn’t a very cheerful movie though. It was a tear jerker. One of those movies that makes you feel bad for being a stinky, spoiled American. Ben Kingsley was awesome as usual. I am really starting to develop a thing for Jennifer Connelly. I think I am going to add all of her movies to my Netflix que.

Yeah, and now I have to hang up here and watch Scrubs. Oh my gosh that show! Did you see last week’s new one? K and I were watching innocently enough and then it totally punched us in the stomach during the last 30 seconds. We were bawling! This week is a continuation. I hope it’s not as sad. Last week’s punch happened while my Coldplay song “Fix You” was playing. It was a KO.

I wonder how much drawing and creative project work I could get done if I wasn’t watching so much TV? Oh well. There’s always the weekend.

I’m writing to you now from work. This post may take a while to complete. I should be working and not writing. People should be hearing mouse clicking coming from my cubicle not finger typing. I’ll have to type sentences here and there. I’m calling Place #3 “work” now aren’t I? I’m still freelance so it’s not officially “work” as in the employer, employee sense.

This post writing while working thing isn’t working. I’ll have to write to you all when I get home tonight.