Drew McDermott

Sasha

I'm back from a great weekend in the mountains of North Carolina, where I saw my friends Rachael and Bryan get hitched at a farm that's been converted into an inn.

Purple

The First Time, The Last Time

You may have known that Versus was playing shows again, but did you know they'd recorded a new album? You do now! While you're thinking about that, you can watch a clip of them playing Blade of Grass last month in NYC.

A Little More Tsukiji

I. I stumbled across Craighton Berman's photos from the fish market in Tokyo earlier today, so I figured I'd head back to that and post some more photos from that part of the trip.

II. If you have some time on your hands, or you're bored at work, head over to Sound Opinions and listen to the reformed Jesus Lizard get interviewed and play some songs. Guess what, David Yow once drank so much, he didn't have any memory of recording a song! I know, shocking.

In Kamakura

At a Shinto shrine.

Rangefinder + Beer

A Series of Tubes

From Ask Metafilter, via Jared, comes this great little bit of history:

Somewhere along the line, the phrase "blow me" had entered the company vernacular, as a shorthand for "send me a copy of what you have via the pneumatic tubes." That was also a signal to the party on the other end to go wait for the delivery at his floor's tube station, if he wanted it right away (well, within the couple of minutes it took to traverse the system, what with some mail room operator delay). If you just told someone to send you something, it could mean just put it in the inter-office mail, which went around twice a day on the mail carts. You did that with sample parts, and other physical items too big or too heavy for the tube system.

So, if you were up in the executive suite, you'd frequently overhear one side of a conversation where Sales was talking to someone in Engineering about some customer request, and it would abruptly end "Fine. Blow me." and then the Sales end of the conversation would hang up his phone and saunter off to the pneumatic station on his floor, to await the arrival of a drawing from Engineering, that would explain what Engineering's view of the problem was. And conversely, if you were down in Engineering, where the documents were maintained and archived, you'd hear constant requests for customer correspondence, sketches, specs and such, as "Yeah, we need that, before we can release shop drawings. Blow me." Or, "If you wanted this yesterday, you should have blown me yesterday."

Sad in Heaven

Listen: To the far superior version of the Mats' Can't Hardly Wait that was recorded for Tim. A friend was arguing for the other version, but really, I don't think there's any question which one is better.

Read/Look: Behind making the poster/invitation for my friends' wedding.

Foul Swoops

Osaka Arcade

Drink Vendor at Asakusa

Graveyard at Koyasan

The Osaka Police Band

Performing at Shin-Osaka Station.

Garden in the Sky

The little garden on top of one end of Kyoto Station.