now playing

showtime(s)

In the event that you happen to be in or around Portland, Oregon between now and the 23rd of this month, consider swinging by the Clinton Street Theater for the Filmed by Bike festival, so you can check out the glorious, albeit condensed (eight minute) version of my Fixed and the City project from earlier this year.

It's unfortunate that I couldn't crack the logistics enough to get myself on a plane in time, but I'm still sleeping easy, knowing all those after-hour editing sessions have somehow wormed their way up the stream to the big screen.
Even if the audience is throwing rotten certified organic fruit and empty locally micro-brewed beer bottles by its end, it's still a damn good feeling to be up there alongside some infinitely superior independent bike films.

Will upload said version to Vimeo once the festival has concluded at the end of this week.

Thanks Portland.

like donkey kong

Check this! HEADSET is in!

April 17th! Portland! Oregon! The Clinton Street Theater!

Bikes! Movies! Steez! More bikes! 

Paper bag! 

Fixed and the City: "el fin"

Four months in the making, "Fixed and the City" is a lot of things. It's the digital marriage of Panaracer rubber, asphalt, and sound. A moving picture mixtape. A single-speed mission statement. A dedication. A memoir. The difference between simple ownership, and unabashed love. It's less about the "scene," and more about a day in the life; fixed gears on this little concrete canvas of ours.

Oh, and it's about thirty minutes long.
Crack open a cold one, and turn the volume up.

Sorry to keep you waiting.





* Since this is just a weak sample, to hit the full version and/or download the torrent, follow this linkage to Vuze.com. And if those two clicks somehow end up giving you fits, blast me an email so I can set you up with my best Indonesian call center impersonation.

burn after editing

Late last night, the fixie project finally made it through the hellish MPEG conversion gauntlet, and into the annuls of YouTube, but this morning I awoke to find it had been inexplicably yanked even before I had a chance to see how it looked. Am I disappointed? Yes. But surprised? Not really.
Still, rather than resume the monthlong cranial abuse at the expense of the varnish on my desk, I'm pressing ahead to make the project available for download via torrent. Will hopefully have that link up shortly.

Additionally, in keeping stride with the project's original goal, a shortened, FatC "cliff note" version which should fit neatly under ten minutes, and attract far less attention from the unscrupulous, banhammer-wielding goons in San Bruno, is also under construction. Conveniently enough, this version will hopefully be sent off to Seattle for the Filmed by Bike festival in April, which just so happens to be a few short months away.

Crank the shitty-ass pop music. This one's going back under the tarpaulin.



ps:  While I don't currently have the resources to burn, and internationally 
ship a dvd of the full-length project file to everyone who wants one (those 
understandably without torrent access), shoot me an email and perhaps we 
can work something out. Promising lucky charms or speed stick in exchange 
would almost certainly expedite your request.

premiere'd

 

fixed gears, and candles in the Trees lounge
 

  

t-minus 15 minutes to seeing his heavy metal mug on the big screen

  

fried chicken and grenades (sweet band name)

 

here we go

brought to you by Chuck Berry

crowd digs it

The "Fixed and the City" project party drew to fitting completion, the scouting, drafting, shooting, editing, nail-biting, beer slamming, and udon slurping of the past three months. Even though he can't read English, I'd still like to pass along a huge thanks/air high-five to Nobu from Trees for setting the event up, and to Kyousuke from the now-defunct Round Wheel for all the parts, repairs, and inspiration that put us well on our way.

The troops have been rallied. And I think we're just getting warmed up.

lost and rendered

Well, it's done. This is what it looks like, as I sit back with a few cookies and some orange juice to wait out the encoding process. I'll try to make the full HD version available online somehow--either via YouTube, or on Vimeo (preferable). Stay tuned over the weekend, as I finally let this one go.

[update 1/19]

Been having some very serious technical difficulties on multiple fronts (compression and burning) that are keeping me from getting this baby on the web, and/or in your hands. If I said to "sit tight" before, kindly sit a little tighter, a little longer.
It's still coming--I promise.

that's how the whispers start

So I guess a blessing from Nobu makes it official. Which means I've got four and a half days to get these last few edits right before I toss it to the masses. 

The "Fixed and the City" Moving Picture Mixtape project finally premieres at Trees this Friday.

To say I'm nervous to have my little commemoration publicly shown would be a huge understatement. But what really gets me about this is having to get up in front of everybody and speak in Japanese--a masochistic sport I don't exactly have the most inspiring track record in.

Come on boss, that shit's just torture.

Anyway, start the countdown, son:

coming soon

Just a few weeks left. Crunch time.

If your compy has the stones, I suggest you check out the trailer in glorious HD over at Vimeo.

** update 12/20 **

Trailer is getting some traffic love, courtesy of the boys over at lockedcog.com, and our hometown boys at Trees. Shit yes.

Starting to feel the pressure.

like a pillar of salt

We were shooting some footage for the Headset fixie project down at the station a few nights ago, when someone had the bright idea (I was totally just kidding at the time) to take the fun underground, into the winding caverns of the Okayama Ichiban-gai shopping mall. I'll be the first to say that whipping blind corners and leaving fresh rubber on the glistening linoleum is all fun and games until somebody skids face-first into a storefront shutter.

Then it's hilarious:

seriously, just leave him

Still working on getting the music for this spot just right--I need something soft enough to accentuate our hallway stealth, but still with enough punch at the critical moment of facial impact to ensure that the metallic, echoing crash still resounds with the viewer long after the bowel-aching hilarity has passed.

cutting room floor

After logging yesterday's project footage into Final Cut, I took some of the more unusable leftover stuff and threw it into my low-tech iMovie blender for the boys over at Fixed and the City.

Long before we started this two months ago, I had an overarching plan for the master project down on my little Moleskin, but once the actual footage started coming together, what's unfolded in the FC timeline has been anything but what I could have expected. I'm very stoked about where this is going.

Stay tuned.

[Update 12/1]

The boys over at Milano Fixed way the crap out in Italy picked this up and posted it on their blog. 

Thanks guys, but this is just the cutting room. Will have a better sample for you soon. 

definitely not nothing

slow going, but at least it's going