Christmahanukwanzivus Art

Here is a little bit of behind the scenes creativity to share.  I host an annual Christmahanukwanzivus party, and I wanted the image in the invite to set the mood for the party AND be unique.  I used a pic of some fun loving mammals, and upped the level of fun until it said cozy holiday.  Took about 45 min on Pixlr.com

The party was great too!  We made snow flakesI always like to document my peeps at get togethers, but during the party not everyone was there at the same time :(  So I took 2 pics and photoshopped them together.  You can see that on the right it is daytime and the left it is night.  Not my best shop job, but un-noticeable photoshop always feels like a lie to me, so I like to leave it obvious (and it's WAY easier too : )

Signal to Noise

I have been thinking about the phrase "Signal to Noise" recently.  I want to jot down what I think of it, right now, in May of 2013, while I am 34.  A lot of these thoughts have been floating around my head for years.  I am going to slide into talking about it diagonally from another thought.  How I feel about sell out bands, and how that is an outgrowth of my feelings on creativity in art.

I have often talked about how much I respect the bands The Counting Crows, Smashmouth, and Gwen Stefani of No Doubt.  Specifically, I like how they each more or less sold out and blatantly switched to a pop style, because there was no economic future in their original style.  Early in Counting Crows growth, you can see them try to mature and stay true to themselves.  Like Eddie Vedder in Pearl Jam, you see these bands initially wanting to not sell out, and make shit pop music.  But then you can see them very quickly give up on that and decide instead to sell out and sell out hard.  Smashmouth more than any other.  And I respect this tremendously.  Why?  Because it fits this narrative I have:
       
    The majority of art is ineffective.  It is made as an expression of
    creativity, and succeeds at that, but achieves little else beyond.
    Which is to say, it does not land with an audience.  It is dead on
    arrival.  It is stillborn.  No one cares, and it means nothing to the
    majority of people who encounter it.  Worse, it may counteract
    any intent the creator had.  To me, this is fine.  Because if the art
    was made without intent beyond the creators desire to create,
     then that is all it was meant to do.  However, what angers and
    frustrates me is when the artist decides to tag on an intention
    afterward, or worse, they have the intention from the beginning
    and fail to execute on this intention effectively.  I hate seeing
    creators do what they know how to do, and wishing it achieved
    some result, when it clearly fails to do so.  I hate that very much.
       
    The majority of art s ineffective.  If you want to make art be
    effective, affective, or DO anything, then you have to own that
    and really grapple with how the enduser is going to receive it.
    I find most creators, all of us really, to be lazy.  It isn't natural,
    but it is necessary, to really think about how your creation will
    land with others.  But it is only necessary if you want your
    creation to DO something.  If you don't care, then you can go
    make whatever you want.  Like Eddie Vedder writing a song
    about cockroaches.  He wanted to express something, and
    not write a radiohit for some labels.  And he succeeded at that.
    Criticism of art, is only valid, in my opinion, in analyzing what
    was intended, and did it succeed in that ambition?

And that is why I love Smashmouth so much.  They made a shitty ska album late in the third wave of ska, at the peak of ska's popularity and just before interest in it crumbled and vanished.  Had their follow up record been ska, it would have utterly failed.  What happened instead was that they had one slightly non-ska song on the album that became a record hit, and they subsequently decided to ditch their entire position as a ska band, and instead make music that sounded like their one pop song, with the intention of achieving further mainstream success.  And they succeeded wildly with their song Hey now you're an Allstar!  I love that they had an intention and succeeded at it.  Many other ska bands from this time, maybe half heartedly tried to do the same thing, but more or less failed and fell by the way side.

When a creator creates a creation, which they only half-heartedly intend to achieve a result, it seems to me that they fail.  It seems to me to be necessary to know what you want to achieve with a creation,  and really take on being responsible for making it work.  In the world of writing, this is what editors do.  They tell authors "hey this isn't working, it needs to be fixed, or it won't achieve the result you want."  A day or so ago I was reading a book on the biology of evolution, and he was just blathering on wasting pages and paragraphs not saying anything, and then just failing to hit home the most important points that mattered.  Ugh.  It was all noise, no signal.

As I understand it is a legit scientific measurement that came out of the field of electronics.  Signal is the desired information, and noise is the irrelevant information that is cluttering up/interferring with your ability to detect the relevant desired information.  The ratio of signal to noise therefor indicates how much you are getting of what you want, versus how much junk is obscuring it.  At a personal level "Signal to Noise" means can you get what you want out of this or no?

An example.  In an online forum discussing something of interest to you, the divergence into tangentially unrelated topics increases the noise to signal ratio, until it becomes so hard to learn about what you are interested in, that you give up and leave the discussion.

So to me, in art, if what was created fails to convey its intended concept, or induce its intended emotion in the audience (or achieve whatever it was intended to achieve), then the creator has failed because their signal to noise ratio was off.  Smashmouth saw that people wanted pop music, and made pop music almost devoid of anything ska-like, and succeeded.  The band Reel Big Fish tried to make pop music, but also tried to keep their ska roots in doing it, and failed, because people didn't want their ska roots cluttering up their pop music.  If Reel Big Fish's intention was to succeed as mainstream stars, they failed.  If their intention was to stay true to their Ska roots, then they succeeded.  This example illustrates my theory that Intention is the measure by which art can be evaluated or criticized, and the unit of measurement then is Signal-to-noise.

End part 1.
Begin part 2.

Here is an entirely different way I have been thinking about Signal to Noise.  I have not synthesized this way of thinking with the above way of thinking.  I will (I imagine) do that later.  For now, I just want to get it out, so that I can save it in writing for the "later" that I am hoping will happen.

What follows is an interpretation of how the ratio of Signal to Noise relates to the information gathering technique's used in the Intuitive and Sensory styles of the Myer's Brigs personality types

At the core level, my understanding of what Myer's and Brigs were aiming at, was to define how any given person most immediately goes about solving a need for information.  The intuitive style they propose is a way of describing when an individual as a habit, seeks out and notes a wide variety of information, and then seeks to arrive at clues by comparing all that information.  In contrast, the Sensory style depicts when an individual screens out as much information as possible, seeking the specific relevant clues needed.  A wide array versus a laser focus.

My assesment has been that The wide array succeeds better in situations of uncertainty, finding information where there is little to go on.  The sensory style works better when there is an abundance of information, and dodges overload.

As interpretted through the conceptualization of Signal to Noise...
Intuitive style data collection is actually a mechanism to tolerate and make use of data with a low Signal to Noise ratio.
Sensory style data collection is tailored to using data with a high Signal to Noise ratio.
Therefore, which technique is best to use in any given circumstance, could be determined by understanding what the Signal to Noise ratio is, and consequently using the best tool for that circumstance.  If I understand Myer's Brigs test correctly, they are evaluating which you prefer to use, or rely on most frequently.  Which can help you understand why the technique you most commonly employ is failing, in the face of the kinds of circumstances you are using it in.  As well as how others attempts yield different results.

Okay, now I have to go do other things and think other thoughts.  Blog out.

The Origin story of Mahdroo's Name:

One day five years ago I self actualized... POP! At that time, if you had been malkovching into mind, you would have seen that a lot happened all at once. Most important was that I was in utter awe, and in this awe I realized I could have anything I wanted out of life, literally anything, and I was absolutely certain to my core of this fact. However, at this time I was unaccustomed to wanting things. I was rusty and found it difficult, so I started trying to think of things to want. Here is a list of things I immediately thought of:
- A sandwhich (but no, I realized I had already eaten and wasn't hungry)
- A new car (alas, I liked the car I had)
- A new apartment (liked the one I had)
- A girlfriend (turns out I liked the freedom of not having one, and feeling like a victim about not having one)
-I wanted the ability to lift a truck over my head (I had it. I had enough money to rent a crane, etc).

I thought of more things to want only to keep realizing that I did not honestly want them. Within 5 minutes I had exhausted my creativity. I came to understand that I did not want "things." This left me befuddled. What was there to want? I paused for some time, mind ablank, standing there looking stupid.

Then, in that emptiness, a little voice in the back of my head said "well, I have an idea for something we could want." To which I replied "oh, what is your idea little voice?" and it said "well, how about a new name?" And I must have looked confused so the little voice elaborated "...an awesome name! The best name ever!" And getting the idea I grew enthused "Oh!!! That is a really good idea! I would LOVE a new name, an awesome name! That would be really extraordinarily wonderful!"

Now, what neither I nor the little voice knew at that time, was that a new name was really the first manifestation of deeper change that was blossoming inside me. The idea was that I could truly and completely be myself. Be exactly who I am, all the time, with everyone. Instead of trying to be who I believed others wanted me to be, I could just. be. me. It was the possibility of acceptance.

And KABLOOOOOMMM!!!!! The idea unfolded in my mind, and it felt like every birthday and Christmas combined into one. I got REALLY excited. I could have a name that sounded like what I am like. Truth in advertising if you will. A name that would convey to others exactly what I am like, that would express all the enthusiasm and creativity that make up me. A name that was my own creation, unique and mine and amazing! I dropped what I was doing and ran off to create my new stupendous name.

Mind you, all of this was happening in a matter of minutes. It was very intense (just like me), but now dear reader, please flashback in time with me to 6 months prior to this event. On this day farther back in my past, I had not self actualized. On this day I was in an odd part of Los Angeles, and talking to some random strangers, as I am often found to be doing, and in this case I had just said to several black women "Why do you guys have such funny names?" and they were ALL visibly shook and, like, "awww hell naww!" "No you didn't!" Then one woman saw that I was looking at them with this naive waiting curiousity and she said "oh, you're just a stupid curious white boy...okay. Here's the deal. Our parents thought that each of us was unique and wanted us to have names that were an expression of that uniqueness. So instead of using names that already existed, they made up new ones by combining words together." And I said "AWESOME! I wish I had a cool unique name. But I didn't. My name was Matt.

Now, flash forward with me back to my self actualizing experience. When we left me I had set out to make my new name. I got a pencil and paper and started writing every word I could think of that I like. My favorite word is shellac. That didn't help any. In fact, nearly none of the words worked, because I was determined to have a "k" sound in my name. Very masculine, I thought. After spending quite a while failing to find a masculine name that suited me, it occurred to me that I am not particularly masculine. I thought "what am I like?" and I immediately envisioned myself running through a crowd enthusiastically yelling "WHOOOOOOOOOO!" at the top of my voice. Clearly I needed "oo" in my name. There were surprisingly few O's in all my words. The first word I had written down was Madrona: a native American tree with red peely bark and fruit that looked like a thousand exclamation points. I added this word to the best adjective that described me: Kooky, and I got Madrooky. That did not work. Not enough OOH! So I said "Mahdroo" and immediately I knew that I had it. I lept up and ran to my computer to google it. No spelling of Mahdroo was a word. I then picked the spelling of my choice, deciding that Madroo would sound like a crazy marsupial. Silent H.

I got every login name under Mahdroo. I got Mahdroo.com I went all out. In the coming days I told everyone I knew, and then everyone I ever knew, and my family and friends. I told them all this very long story that you have just read, and I asked them all to call me Mahdroo from now on. Many had concerns and objections and reasons why they didn't want to call me Mahdroo, and I listened to them all, and asked them to call me Mahdroo anyways. And that was back in 2005. I have been Mahdroo ever since.

The one thing I have left out of the story is the doubt. All along the way, there were little bouts of doubt. And to those I would say "well, if I can do anything then nothing can stop me, and this name can be my test of that. If can't make this name work and stick and be everything I ever dreamed it would be, then maybe I can't do anything." And every day my name proves to me that I can do anything, that I can shape whatever future I choose for myself. That is the meaning of my name.

Oh, wait, no. Sometimes people ask "what does your name mean?" and I randomly decided that it meant "he who brings cookies... or enthusiasm." They are the same, I think.

Now I will direct traffic!

Fun story time: I drove to work to check my schedule, which took longer than normal because traffic was hella backed up because all the traffic lights were down in West Hollywood. On my way home I was surprised that they were still down and there were no cops directing traffic. Santa Monica & Fairfax is a major intersection with two lanes both way and a middle turn lane. Cars were creeping through it and traffic was backed up for blocks and blocks. How my small, well-run city could take so long to rectify the problem baffled me. I decided that I would help out and direct traffic in the mean time till someone came to take care of it. It wasn't all altruism though. I was scared but far more excited at the thought of directing traffic. I thought "this may be my one chance to do it. I'm gonna prove to myself that I can!" It had air of suspense and excitement you'd associate with being the first on a new roller coaster ride. I parked my car, ran up to my apartment, grabbed my bright red don't-crash-into-me jacket, and I got my roommate, telling him my plan and recruiting him to come take some pictures, which is how we got this gem.



I just strode out into the middle of the intersection and got in the center. I don't know if you know, but there is a little spot in the center of every intersection where no one drives. It is full of dirt and coins and stuff. I stood there and started waving cars to go, and stopping the others with my hands. I had a fierce stop that could stop any car dead in it's tracks. Instead of 1 car at a time I could get 10 thru, then turning cars, then switch directions. It was tremendously more efficient with me that without me and this made me feel good about doing it. I got a lot of happy honks and waves. Many people yelled "thank you" and some looked at me dumbly. A few I saw taking pictures or video of me. I was pretty excited and waving my arms hugely like Peter Townshend. Giant windmill circles to get cars to do what I wanted. I hopped around a lot and I was yelling at the cars what I wanted them to do. Lots of pointing and waving. Afterwards people who saw me do it said I was really really good at it and asked if I had had training to do it.

After 20 minutes a cop showed up. I figured he would come replace me or arrest me, so I waved at him. He didn't walk out so I yelled/asked if he'd like me to come to him. He picked the latter. So switched traffic direction and went over to him. He parked in one of the turn lanes, which blocked traffic, and seemed sort of a dick move. And he was arresting me. Yup. Hands behind my back, against the car, he took everything out of my pockets, and all the while I was very friendly and answered all his questions pleasantly. By the time he had me get in the cop car I think he had grasped that I was just a very nice guy who was helping with the traffic. All the while, the people at the bus stop and crosswalks were booing and yelling at him that I was doing a good job and to leave me alone. He drove me all of 300 ft around the corner and just up past the intersection (now blocking a different lane of traffic, again WTF). He got out and a bunch of my advocates chased him down and were yelling at him. I waved and signaled that I was okay, and this was all cool. And the officer walked over and explained procedure to them and calmed them down. I kinda figured from the get go I could get arrested for this (at least my roommate knew where I was) and I was prepared and okay with that outcome. Anyhoo, the cop talked to me for awhile. Very nice fellow. He informed me that I had generated eleven 911 calls in the 20 minutes I directed traffic. I think people were concerned there was an accident and didn't understand what I was doing. That made sense. I told the officer I understood and appreciated his efforts, and got him to clarify what exactly was illegal about what I was doing, so I would know not to do it anymore. You can't stand in the middle of intersections it turns out. And apparently neither could he. His cop friends pulled up and parked their cars, and came up to his window to talk. He painted a rather polite picture of my efforts, and they all commiserated that the union that directs traffic was doing a crap job covering this situation and the city of West Hollywood was botching it all to heck. Ahhhhhh. I had expected him or his buddies to direct traffic instead of wasting time on me, but alas, they couldn't. Before the officer let me go, I checked in to see whether I had been "arrested" or "apprehended" and he informed me that I had been merely "detained" which does not sound nearly as cool. Disappointing right?

But no, not being arrested is good news, and better news is that I didn't cause any accidents or get hit by a car. The best news is that I made a difference, and the fun part was that I enjoyed doing it and people really appreciated my efforts. Plus now I have a sweet cop story to tell. Carpe was diem'd and my life sure is fun!

my Avatar adventure story

Before the scifi film Avatar came out I was pretty excited about it. I bought tickets months in advance and posted this pic on facebook asking "who wants to go see the 12:01 opening day premier midnight screening with me?

A friend, seeing my enthusiasm invited me onto the Fox studios lot where she worked (exciting) and gave me a full sized promotional poster (awesomeness!). My roommate and I, being total nerds, hung it up in the hallway. This only helped get us more excited about the film, and the night we were to see it, I went hours early to wait in line to get us good seats. Now, my roommate had had blue face paint from Halloween, and I brought it to the premier. I figured "if I am going to really geek out on this film, I might as well geek all the way out." I decided to abandon all fear and shame and convinced the girl next to me in line to help me paint my face blue. I hadn't anticipated it, but soon every camera there wanted a picture of me. Then a video team was interviewing me, and then the guy in charge of promoting IMAX nationally was having me pose for pictures. I realized this wasn't going to work. Who cares what one dorky guy does? I told them to wait a minute (boy was that a powerful feeling) and I went outside and started asking everyone if anyone wanted to paint their face blue and get their picture taken. Honestly, I knew we needed a woman for to make it work but there were no takers.
I walked back surprisingly defeated. Then the gal who painted my face trotted in, and volunteered. Hot! So I painted her face while her boyfriend waited outside (double hot!), and then the two of us posed for pictures. She was really nervous about it, so I told her how to pretend this was normal and look really excited. I think she had a good time :-) They gave us free t-shirts and Avatar toys, which was pretty cool. Like we'd won a contest or something!


Then, the IMAX guys told us James Cameron, the director of Avatar, was coming. We were going to get to meet him and pose for a picture! Hot damn! When he showed up we weren't supposed to talk to him, but he ended up talking to us. He shook my hand and said to his friend/associate "See this is what I'm talking about." When we posed for the picture (as you can see below) we used the pose and face we had practiced before (with less eyes bugging out). And despite the fact that we were the one's wearing blue face paint, Mr Cameron managed to out-geek us by saying "no no, you are supposed to be like 7 ft tall, we should make you look taller than me!" Well played sir, truly your are a king among the nerds!



I got the email address of the cameraman, and asked him to email me the picture, which he did at 4am. I posted it to popular social news site reddit.com at 5am, and by midnight it had 25,000 page views. Wow. I had succeeded at making myself the most visible person in the role of avatar fan. So of course, the next day ABC news in New York called me and asked if I would be interviewed for a segment on Avatar to air on Good Morning America. Holy shit! How did they even get my number? I told them I would do it if they promised they could interview me in under a half hour and have everything ready for me when I got there. NYC agreed to my terms. So I took an hour off of work, and drove over to their studio. On the way there I called to check they were ready for me and the receptionist said "I'm sorry, who are you?" OH NOES! but when I called back 10 minutes later he was super apologetic "I"m sorry Mr. Mahdroo, yes we are ready for you, everything is set up!"
Outstanding! I painted my face blue as I drove, so that they could interview me blue-faced (dangerous yet worthwhile). Then I called my mom who called everyone she knew and told them I was going to be on tv. Apparently the mayor of my mom's town called her to say he'd seen me on tv while on vacation in Maine. Epic win! Here is the clip below:



Our pictures were included in Entertainment Weekly two weeks in a row (good gracious! see below) as well as being featured on the Yahoo homepage, and on my favorite scifi blog io9.com <---pretty much anywhere they needed to represent Avatar, the put up the picture with me.

My Obama airplane crash dream!

Okay, I know dreams aren't normally worth posting, but this one has amazing special effects and Obama was in it!


Last night I dreamnt I was flying on board air force one and sitting next to Obama. Except it was more like he was on a passenger jet and sitting in coach. He and the other lady in our row were jabbering away. Then he turned to me and I was so excited to ash him questions. I was asking him if he had aides who helped him with email. Like if he wanted to read an old email he remembered, did he log on & find it, or delegate the search to an aide?

He laughed and told me it was an interesting question. He was about to answer when the plane started a steep dive and began turning in a tight circle. I looked out the window and saw flak everywhere. Fighter jets were shooting us down. I braced for death, and found I was surprisingly calm and at peace. I made sure my seatbelt was tight and wove my carry on thru my legs so it wouldn't hit anyone in the head. Then the back of the airplane exploded off and we began spinning and falling/flying like a frisbee. I remember thinking Joe Biden would be president, and another JFK-like amazing leader would be lost to us.

What I didn't know was how close to the ground we were at that point. A few second laster we crashed into an Iranian soccer stadium, wend across the field and ended in a sea of busses. I was alive. Most of us were alive!

I was telling people to run out the back, and I ran up to the front. One pilot ran out, but the Senior Captain was injured. I told her what a good job she had done saving us all, and picked her up and carried her outside. While running down the aisle sideways so as to not bumpt the captain, I saw there were grandparents with kids still seated. I wanted to help them off the plane but the captain said no, the most important thing is to protect the president.

I could not find anyone as we'd all split up, so I hid in a nearby school, in a vacant gym, behimd two vending machinesl for a week. A white Labrador Retriever who had been on the plane with us ran back and forth between all our locations and delivered notes. Obama was alive but injured and Robert Gibbs was protecting him.

Then a kid found me and ratted me out. They realized the dog was our agent. I ran and ran and ended up hiding in the shrubs in some suburb. After a day the dog found me and walked up all leprosied and died right next to me. A man came chasing after him, but didn't find us. I took of over a set of rolling green hills nearby and woke up.


-Mahdroo

What does a Mahdroo want?

A list of things I want:

-pants (jeans and khakis)
-shirts (button up short sleeve shirts)
-shoes (saucony sneakers)
-a t-shirt from Swingers (with the presidential seal of swingers on it)

-car tires
-car bumper (rear)
-car driver side mirror
-car oil change

-iPod for Jessica
-iPhone (the new one when it comes out)
-new mac (maybe in 2010)

[EDIT] followup.
Mahdroo eventually got new jeans, car tires, a driver side mirror, and oil change. Jessica got a new iPod. At this much later date, Mahdroo still wants all this other stuff.