Building a Bench From Maple Plywood: The Design
Hand Made Bench 10
As some of my friends know, I’ve been building (together with my Dad) a dining room table and bench, in a style that is basically mid-century farm style. I decided that I wanted to be able to see tons of striations in the surface of both the bench and the table, so we planned to rip 2″ slats from maple plywood, and then assemble the table top and bench top by screwing the slats together after turning them on their ends.
I really should have been keeping regular entries on this process as I find it really fascinating to work with wood and to assemble original furniture designs. Maybe I’ll go back into my phone and post some of the first few pictures from the work. (more…)
Raveonettes at the Henry Fonda in Los Angeles, January 24, 2009
I really like this band, who apparently is obsessed with the Everly Brothers, and I was super happy to be going to their show last Saturday — and actually, I ended up liking them even more than that. They’re weirdly shy, but generate so much sound, all reverby and space-echoey, that their music ends up being an excellent stand-in for whatever charismatic personality they might lack.
And maybe that sounds a bit too harsh. I don’t need David Lee Roth every time I see a concert. They were pretty real, pretty enthusiastic about what they were playing, and they presented a pretty full sound very very well with not too many people on stage. With the mysterious, foggy, chilly and noir ambience they cultivated sonically on stage, I was left wondering… is David Lynch somewhere in the audience.
If they come to your neck of the woods, go and check them out for sure.
Concert Photos of the Raveonettes at the Henry Fonda in Los Angeles
Raveonettes at the Henry Fonda
Old Godard blog posting with tons of great material, in word and video, at the New Yorker online from October, 2008.
The End of White America by Hua Hsu in the Atlantic, current issue (January-February).
The Things They Carried, scenes from the Gaza border, by Yossi Klein Halevi in The New Republic online.
“No Signs Kim Has Eased Control in North Korea,” an interview from the Council on Foreign Relations and Foreign Affairs Magazine. Interviewee:Don Oberdorfer, Chairman, U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies; Interviewer:Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor, CFR.org.
Hal Ashby by Darren Hughes, from Senses of Cinema.
William T. Vollman’s author page from McSweeny’s Internet Tendency.
Lydia Davis’s story (abstract from) “Thyroid Diary” from the New Yorker.
Concert Review of The High Places & Hecuba
Thursday January 22, 2009 at 9:00pm
The Echo, 1822 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, California
High Places
The Echo is a great place for a show, just about any night of the week. Sound is generally good, crowd is promising for site-seeing and many of the acts that come through are solid. I didn’t know much about High Places or Hecuba, but was pleasantly (more…)
