kevin barnett

Last night, I went with friends on the Pioneer, a 100+ ft schooner out in the New York harbor. The trip as arranged through friends of friends and the South Street Seaport Historical Society.

Nostalgic, to say the least, floating by the Statue of Liberty on ship powered by wind. The Manhattan skyline from the south tip was beautiful and actually made the city look smaller. The Coast Guard made their presence noted with big machine guns on the back of their boats. Late in the evening, The Staten Island ferry patrons felt like they could take some fantastic flash photography of the ship with us on it.

Flash photography sucks. Give it up, people. And I clearly need to get a faster lens for my Canon.

Shout out goes to G & M for the invite, company and Corona’s.

I was just listening to Massive Attack - Teardrop

When I first read that Kevin Smith was going to make yet another Jersey film, my eyes rolled. Since Chasing Amy, the View Askew films went downhill fast resulting in the tragic bomb of Jersey Girl which I admit, I have not seen.

Although I have always respected Smith for his geek roots, his films have annoyed me. Specifically his writing style - he seems to have the same issue I have when writing characters in that they all at some point start sounding like each other. Jason Lee’s rants in Chasing Amy were brilliant but really, all of the characters in all of the films rant - and I suspect they deliver rants that personal friends of Smith have all heard before. In Dogma, the rants were preachy; in Jay and Silent Bob they were lame.

Clerks II contains some of those moments but at least they are somewhat fresh at this point and are fewer and further between. The all-new rants, updated for 2006, were much more funny than they were preachy. When you think about it, The Lord of The Rings trilogy really was just a bunch of walking…

The characters are the same but different. Jay and Silent Bob were characters again and not parodies of themselves. Rosario Dawson was great. The nods to the previous Jersey films were brilliant as were the pop references. This is a great sequel.

Clerks II sets a new bar, ala American Pie, for taste in comedy, major motion cinema. I don’t want to spoil anyone but I will say that it involves “inter-species erotica”. The easily offended should review Smith’s past films to make sure you’re up to the task for this one.

The film also delivers a fantastic message: happiness is found within your own destiny and not of others. On that point, Smith may have reclaimed his crown as the Gen XYZ’ers social commentator. Never fear, the film has a feel-good ending.

Fig 1. A scene from Clerks II or an excuse to have a picture of Rosario Dawson on my blog.

I was plesantly surprised that Kevin Smith actually made a funny movie worth watching. I’ll be interested to see what he does next now that the Jersey characters can be left alone….please…for the love of God.

I was just listening to Q Lazzarus - Goodbye Horses

Google has updated their index and I am currently the #5 result for Kevin Barnett. Progress has been made but I will not have satisfaction until the volleyball player is #2.

I’m not sure who the actor is either, listed on IMDB as Kevin Barnett (III). These imposters must be stopped.

I was just listening to Lily Allen - Absolutely Nothing

It’s been pretty hot the past few days in New York, averaging about 95 degrees. Friends from Texas may laugh at the limited exposure to what they deal with all summer long - but I digress - as a pedestrian, I’m not able to travel from one air conditioned vessel to another. The walks to and from the subway - and the subway platforms themselves are the worst part. When I get home, I take a shower to cool off since the window units in the apartment are left turned off during the day.

The heat gets me down in the same manner the cold gets other people down…so I’ve got outside-the-cabin fever, if you will. Looking forward to the cooldown in NY tonight but the rest of the country, I feel for you.

I was just listening to Gorillaz - 19-2000

My first real show in New York - and after missing Les Claypool on the C2B3 and first “Fancy Band” tour, I felt obligated to attend.

The venue reminds me of a House of Blues - new construction, expert sound system but lacking the character of an old theater or ballroom. Capacity is a little over 2000 but the show was not sold out. Relatively cheap ticket but Nokia gets paid at the bar: $7 beers and $10+ booze drinks.

The opening band was The Coup - hip-hop from Oakland, CA which makes sense both from the funk perspective and that Claypool always supports Bay-area acts. Technically a sound band, influenced by Parliment/Funkadelic. The lyrics were a bit lost on me and the crowd wasn’t so much into hip-hop. Actually, the crowd on a whole was mediocre for a Claypool show - either into it or not.

A lot of Primus and old-school Claypool fans have not taken well to the band lineup omitting a guitar player. This spot has been filled by Claypool protegie, Gabby La-La - a cute little Asian playing the sitar, theramin and providing backup vocals. It is because of this that much of the old material cannot be performed and the old material that is has lost some of it’s punch.

The new material off of Whales and Woe sounds fantastic, even though much of it does have guitar tracks performed by Claypool himself. I suspect that because this material showcases his bass playing even more than in the past, he’s able to pull it off live with Gabby. The remaining members of the “Fancy” band brought it as usual and Mike Dylon and Paulo Baldi performed what was probably my favorite drum set I’ve seen or heard on bootlegs.

The setlist was predictable but the Primus teases made it special:

Rumble of The Diesel
Roof
Whales and Woe
Long In The Tooth
Vernon the Company Man
Mr. Krinkle tease > One Step Beyond
D’s Diner
drums/whamola
Buzzards of Green Hill
Cosmic Highway
One Better > Tommy The Cat > One Better

encore:
American Life*
Iowan Gal*
Lust Stings

* solo on the bass banjo

Before Lust Stings, Les made a hilarious comment which I will paraphrase here:

If One Better is the bicep of Whales and Woe, than Lust Stings is certainly the scrotum of the album.

I was just listening to Les Claypool - One Better

After several weeks (months) of hiatus status on welshcrew.com/kevin, I have successfully completed a few transitions. I am living in a great apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and working for MLB.com at the glorious Chelsea Market. More on that to come…

In early June, I procured the domain name “kevinbarnett.com” after several months (years) of waiting. Thankfully the competition was light and that Olympic volleyball player didn’t bite. My objective now is to be the #1 result on google for “Kevin Barnett”. The volleyball player is going down like Chinatown, mark my words.

(note, I’m not going to link to any of his websites. This is war.)

Finally, after several weeks (millenia) of design and development time, I have re-launched my blog on the Wordpress platform at the advice of Cravey and Zeldman. I had been looking for a more powerful blog machine having exhausted the possibilities of Blogger. That’s behind the scenes, however and perhaps the most dramatic change is the design itself. I chose to go minimalist because I didn’t feel that I could execute a stylish design I would be happy with on this go-round.

Settling for second-best may have been the better choice, because I’m enjoying the lightweight-ness of it all and the possibility for options. I’d say the blog better reflects my life right now anyway: all facets of my life have been changed in a manner of weeks; my career is now focused on the technical vs. the design; as a resident of New York City, I am forced to “cut the fat” of my belongings and materialism and live as minimal as possible.

I have to play catch-up on some posts but I’m betting that I won’t have to cheat for a while now that I am free and clear of development on ye ol’ blog.

I was just listening to dZihan & Kamien - Smile