Well another Story Slam goes off without a hitch. And they are seriously getting better and better with every iteration. The audience is larger and louder, the orators are more confident and the lines get delivered at the right time. It was absolutely great! This was seriously the best one to date, and gets me salivating when I think about when the next one will be. Talked to some of the regulars, met some amazing new Slammers and possibly made a connection that could get me into an underground I’ve been trying to get into for years - as a photographer of course.

If you aren’t coming to this thing, what in the hell is wrong with you? It’s awesome! I better see you at the next one; eat, drink, laugh, cry and have your fill of some of the best¹ slammers the TC has to offer!

And speaking of art and what not - starting Friday and going on all weekend it’s the St. Paul Art Crawl!! Hundreds of artists located throughout lowertown St. Paul will be swinging open their doors and letting you in to peek at their wares - and liberate you of any extra Franklins you might be carrying around. So go ahead and print out the map and start marking off where you’d like to go. And if you plan on stopping by the Rossmor building², be sure to let me know. We can have a few beers and play Super Smash Brothers on the Wii. I might throw out a few things this time, but it’s doubtful - both my neighbors are photographers and both of them are also exhibiting. Too many cooks and all that jazz. Besides, my website isn’t fully done yet and I’m busy getting right for a gallery exhibition I have all next month at the Black Dog.

Hoping to see you there! (Or here, even)

1. And, yes, some of the not-so-best [↩]
2. Link doesn’t go to the real website, because for some reason it isn’t coming up for me. WTF? [↩]

Just a friendly reminder - the 5th Story Slam from MPR is tonight at the Bedlam Theater¹ in Minneapolis. It starts at 7:30pm, free parking² but the event will cost you $10 ($5 if you sign up to tell a story, $1back if you get there without your car)

This slam’s theme is Achilles’ Heel - what that means is up to you!
Bedlam Theater has a full bar and menu, and will be serving food³ and drink before, during and after the show.

What’s the Story Slam? From the MPR website about it: “The In The Loop “Story Slam” is a live event (and version of our show) based around the simple formula of great storytelling from anybody and everybody who wants to take a crack at it. The Smarts and I will be there as your guides through the evening, but mostly it’s about whatever stories our talented audience brings to the table.”

Still unsure? How about listening to the last Story Slam (With pictures by yours truly) or checking out the entire “In The Loop” archive.

So I hope you’ll join me, our host Jeff Horwich, and the venerable house band “The Smarts” for what aims to be a night of story tellings, laughter, food and drink!

1. Google Map to Bedlam Theater [↩]
2. And it’s a stone’s throw from light rail [↩]
3. Bedlam Theater’s “Be Social” Polish-Fusion Cuisine - It’s AWESOME! Try the Pieorogis [↩]

A couple years ago, I was driving to work one sunny morning, tunes blaring. As I passed a truck hauling gravel, I watched - in a slowed down Matrix kind of way - a small pebble flying towards my windshield. It hit, and made a might racket as it pinged off. And there I was. Stuck with a little chip missing out of my windshield.

I really didn’t think anything of it, and for years I drove with that tiny chip. All was fine, until the first big snow this winter. See, at the place I used to live at I had heated underground parking. And when I drove from home to the bus stop, it usually wasn’t snowing. So there was never a chance for water to get in, then freeze.

This new place, I park outside. The first big snowstorm, it took me 2 hours to get home. Swish, swish, swish went the wipers, making quick work of the heavy flakes that fell upon my windshield. The car got quite toasty and warm, so much so that I had to turn down the heater. I finally make it home. I don’t even want to park in the parking garage - I decide to just park on the street and move it in a few hours.

And when I did, there was this large crack. And all winter long it got larger, and larger - until it hit an easy 2 feet long.

Well, I didn’t think much of it. Being a Daewoo, it’s not exactly the most premium transportation method available - but it does the job well, and it does it without complaint. But I was getting the itch. The itch that says “Hey, you should check out the new cars. That Mazdaspeed 3 is looking pretty sweet. And such a great price!”

So I decided to scratch it in the only way I can - by fixing what’s wrong with the current ride. It’s 7 years old, but it only has 75,000 miles on it and runs perfect. So really, I should fix it, and keep that extra $400 a month I would be spending in the bank.
I went to Geico.com to just feel out how much new glass would cost and, I shit you not, literally 10 minutes later I had an appointment for this Monday to swap it out. Happened so fast I didn’t even realize it at first. No talking to anyone, no filling out forms, just a dozen or so clicks and some personal information - they even made the appointment.

The glass man came on Monday, replaced my window, and I gave him a check for a little over $200. The glass is perfect, and it was crazy easy.

And I know everyone gives me shit for not having the $3/month glass coverage but this is the first time I’ve ever had to replace a windshield - so I really saved money, not spending thousands on useless coverage over the years.

But damn. I just wanted to say, Geico rocks.

And by soul, I mean art. And by art, I mean my photographs.

The next St. Paul Art Crawl fast approaches - the 25th, 26th and 27th of April in fact. Now I’m not people-friendly enough to actually open my doors to let strangers paw through our goods and make small chit-chat whilst eating expensive foreign cheese and drinking San Pellegrino, but part of the reason we moved here was so that I’d be right on the art crawl circuit.

So instead I’ll be setting up a small display to hang on our front door with some of my nicer pieces¹, with a slew of business cards and a link to my shop. And I’d love for you, dear reader, to be on the ground floor of the Pavleck Art movement!

Indeed, I’m quite serious. I have a lot of money and time invested into my little photography side business, and I’d like to see if I have what it takes to make it with the big dogs. So I’ve setup an Etsy.com shop, and I implore you to check it out. There isn’t much there now, but I plan to add more to it over the weekend. I’d like to know what you think of my prices, especially - to high? To low? To purple?

When you’re done there, feel free to check out Pavleck.Com proper, and if you are really daring, feel free to crawl through the thousands of photos I have up on my Flickr site². I’d like to know what else you think I should put up for sale, and if you have any other ideas.

In fact, I’m so into this idea, that I’ll make ya a deal - if you give me some nice constructive criticism I will reward you! I’ll be ordering a lot of prints over the next several weeks, and I will give you one! A signed, framed photograph of my choosing³ will make it to your door! And they aren’t you’re average HP inkjet print either. Printed via a laser photographic process on Fuji Crystal Archive paper, it ensures a vibrant print that won’t fade, yellow, or bleed. They’ll last longer then me. I’ll contact you via email when it’s ready to go out, so be sure to leave a valid email address when you post. And if you’re post is really good, it might even be a limited edition run, that will never again be printed.⁴

Now let me have it! While you’re doing that, I’ll be busy mucking about trying to pretty up the main site and add some personalization to the Etsy site.⁵

1. So stop on by the Rossmor building during the art crawl - we’re on the 5th floor [↩]
2. 3,892 photos to be exact [↩]
3. Ultimately it’s my choosing, but if there’s one you really really like I might just be able to oblige [↩]
4. After I’ve printed a run, I destroy all digital traces of the photograph except for a low quality “for web” version [↩]
5. Thank God I’m a better photographer then I am a writer [↩]

I’ve heard of bird crap on a car - and I’ve witnessed it first hand - but this, this is a little overkill:

Additionally, my coworker has so far gotten 3 songs stuck in my head, and it wasn’t even 10am. The most current song? Larry Gatlin & The Gatlin Brothers - All the Gold in California. It’s to early for country.

Here, listen to it yourself.

And speaking of Last.Fm - anyone else a member? I’d love to add some more people to it - I know JACC listens to some cool stuff. And Robert won’t shut up about John Kruth. So if you’re on it, add me - if not, get on it! Or tell me what you are using. I really like Last.FM’s Scrobbler, which hooks up to my iPod and automatically logs what I listen to - even when the iPod isn’t connected to the computer¹. Plus they have a lot of great free music downloads and a sweet event calendar so I can see who else is going to the shows I’m going to. It’s win win!

1. Though they call this experimental, and from what I’ve seen it is - it works great if you don’t skip any tracks, otherwise it won’t have anything to scrobble [↩]

I’ve upgraded to Wordpress 2.5. It looks pretty, now to play around with it.

Additionally, I’ll be posting again soon, I’ve just been slammed with work and under the weather - a combination that isn’t very conducive to posting, so sorry.

So Mishka is went into work earlier then normal today, and she won’t be home until almost 8pm. I asked her what she wanted for dinner, and she said there were some chicken breasts and some pork tenderloins in the freezer - defrost something and mix it with something else.

So I took out the pork tenderloin.

And then I got to thinking. She does so much of the cooking - and she’s really good at it. She makes these big complicated meals, requiring 30,000 ingredients and a team of 7 to help assemble it. When I cook, on the other hand, I usually make a hunk of meat, side it with some form of tuber, and slap it on a plate.

But alas, I had a better idea today. Last week my friend Double M mentioned he made a lasagna¹. I love lasagna. So I decided, screw it - pork back in the freezer, I’m makin’ a lasagna. So I asked my Tweeple & did some Googlin’ and I happened upon this highly rated recipe called “World’s Best Lasagna“. With a title like that, how can I go wrong? So off I went to pick up the stuff I needed.

Read the rest of this entry »

1. It was the first time he’s made one, ever [↩]

Screwing around with a capture program and I decided to make a movie out of it. This is, roughly, a day at work. I say roughly, because it’s really only 6 hours or so. It’s made from 675 images taken at 30 seconds intervals starting at 10am. Then it was lumped together as a movie, and here ya go. I plan on setting up a better one tomorrow, and doing it at 10 or 15 second intervals to make it a little bit longer.

I’m feeling pretty sick right now, a weird stomach flu thing going on - destroying my creative urges. I still wanted to leave a post today, and I thought I’d pull up something from the past.

For those that don’t know, I had cancer when I was 28. It came, it went, the world kept on turning - but my life was never the same again. I posted the below to Craigslist.org’s “Rants & Raves” section under Minneapolis on March 16th, 2006. It was a pure act of depression, as I had no idea how I was ever going to recover from it. People liked it, voted it up, it ended up on the “Best Of” list, and was then published in a few cancer-related magazines.

It’s been almost 2 years since I wrote it. And a lot has changed. I’m no longer depressed, I’m healthier, and my life in all aspects is much better then what you’re about to read.

But now I have a burning desire to find a ‘purpose’. To leave my mark on the world. You never truly die if your memory lives on, so I should do something that people remember. But was it that?
And I no longer know what I want to do when I grow up - I’m tasting everything I can in life and trying to find the right fit. It’s been fruitless thus far, but there you have it.

Anyway, read on to see what I wrote in an act of desperation to Craigslist years ago.

Read the rest of this entry »

So, I’m waiting for the lovely Mishka to bring me my new laptop, since DHL can’t read and apparently none of them own a cell phone. So I’m kicking around the internet and I happened upon an article called 12 essential blogwriting tips for building a  successful blog - and it got me thinking. I halfass update my main site for my photography. I have an entire domain for that, so I don’t think I need to keep it there.

Maybe it’s time I drop the photo site and instead drop in something helpful - I’ve been messing around with a few ideas, and I think I’ll just go with them and see what happens.

See, I’ve owned Pavleck.Com for 11 years now (Even though the registry says 8. I accidentally let it drop for a few months around 2000, then got it back) and I’ve been changing it here there and everywhere. I think I should see if I can’t do something interesting with it - something that takes my hobbies and puts em out there. But I dunno. We’ll see.

Some people have to re-arrange the furniture every year or so to keep things interesting, I seem to have to re-write my website every year.