Every Album I Own [Press Play]

It occurred to me about a year ago, as I was reorganizing my compact disc collection, that I own so much music, it's virtually impossible to enjoy it all on a regular basis. I only get around to properly reshelving my discs and records every three months, having scattered them to every corner of my apartment during that time. This usually involves an elaborate reorganization to incorporate new additions, albums in heavy rotation and waning loiterers. During this time I often come across favorites I haven't revisited in years (how could I leave Developer on the shelf for two years without a burn?) and forgotten relics of dread (why do I own or even come to own The Coneheads Soundtrack?).

Between records, compact discs, cassettes, various purchased and scavenged MP3s, I probably own about six hundred something albums and counting. Among them are classics, standards, oddities, rarities, horrors and total embarrassments. I've decided to revisit, in no particular order, every album I own.

This will not include every album I've ever owned (sorry, Sponge). I won't be reviewing the albums or rating them either. The point of this is to revisit my entire collection, see how certain things have held up, speak about the personal nature of music and how it has shaped who I am and, above all, to waste copious amounts of my time and the reader's time. This will also give everyone insight into how terrible my collection really is and how I'm a total poser for ever making fun of anyone else's tastes.

Wait until you see all the garbage I got. Great scott! It is atrocious. I promise to try to make this fun.

Bonus points to anyone who can name all twelve albums in the image above.

Rise and Shine Campers

Don't forget your booties 'cause it's cold out there today. It's cold out there everyday. What is this— Miami Beach?

Yes. I have started a web log. I said I never would. Shoot me in the head. After I failed to renew my longtime, seldom-updated web site www.modernfrog.com, it went down and was bought up by the Generic Placeholder Website Oblivion Corporation, I decided to launch a new temporary lab for new illustrations, comics, ramblings, rantings and obscurantisms until I can re-launch under a new name.

Why not write a manifesto?

Because that's dumb. Besides I don't have any good ideas.

Then why are you putting your ideas online for everyone to see?

Well, I don't think I have any good ideas but I'm hoping maybe I can trick other people into thinking I do.

Sounds foolproof! Okay. How's abouts a mission statement? Y'know for the blog?

Do I really need one? P.S. I don't like that word, "blog." Sorry, blogger.com. I prefer web log. It sounds less like a swamp monster throwing up.

Zzz...*Wa* Oh! I'm sorry what were you saying?

Oh gracious— I'm sorry. Was I boring you? Fine you want a mission statement you'll get one.

[sarcasm]Tha-a-anks.[/sarcasm]

Button up, wise guy. Are you always going to be hanging around here flapping your lips?

...maybe

Ugh.

Let's start with a brief biography. We can call this the "about" section of the web log.

Yeah! Yeah! Who are you anyway?

My name is Evan Larson. I live in Providence, RI— for better or worse. Like many people, bands and corporate entities, I have a myspace page (www.myspace.com/elsplice). You can learn a lot of very general and nonspecific information about me there.

Um, elsplice? What's that?

It's actually E.L.Splice. That's my rap name.

You can rap???

No.

Oh.

It's also a handle I use online in various communities and message boards. It's most prominently featured on www.moviecall.org. This was once a site attached to my own portfolio site but soon ballooned into its own monster. It still exists and is maintained now through the sole efforts of Bill Tsukuda (see his work at www.tsukuda.com). Moviecall was a movie review site. The premise was that every movie we reviewed would be compared to the film, Booty Call.

Sounds dumb.

It was. That was pretty much the point. Though I hear years later a fellow launched a similar site where he compared every movie to The Truth About Cats and Dogs.

That sounds worse.

Yeah, but he was featured on NPR. Go figure. Anyway, there are still some things on Moviecall that are worth checking out. It may hold the record for most misspellings on the internet.

Um...have you ever seen the internet?

Good point. It's still embarrissing.

You mean "embarrassing."

Let's move on.

'kay. You still haven't told us why you're so special.

Well, I'm an illustrator, painter, comics artist and mixologist.

Mixologist? That came out of left field.

Yeah, tell me about it. That was my career "B" that has dominated the last three years of my life. I retired from that recently. I'm hoping to get career "A" going again— "A" for "artist" or "an illustrator" or "a-not slaving my life away to pay rent."

Good luck.

Oh gee thanks.

So as far as your "A" career: would I have seen your work anywhere?

Let's see. My comics have appeared in Nickelodeon Magazine and were most recently featured in Project: Romantic from Adhouse Books (www.adhousebooks.com), which was well received. You may have also seen some of my self-publishhed mini comics such as The Flying Bear.

All right. Strike one. What else have you done?

Let's see. I was selected for the American Illustration 25 web site and I'll soon be appearing in print in the American Illustration 26 collection (www.ai-ap.com). I've been in a bunch of small works shows in and around Providence, most notably RISD|WORKS (www.risdworks.com) and Gallery Katz in Boston. Katz still maintains an online gallery at www.gallerykatz.com.

What else have you got?

Well I started this web log, in part, because I competed in the last round of Fist-A-Cuffs— a fantastic online drawing battle community that must be seen to be believed. Visit it at fistacuffs.blogspot.com. Our team lost in the finals of FACA 4 West. I was the boxing bunny, Peter Sock'em Tail.

Neat-o. So why are you doing this bl— I mean— weblog thing again?

I don't know. I want to write about cool things but I don't want to do reviews or opinion pieces— there are too many opinions online now. I hate all those dumb customer reviews on iTunes and Amazon and all that garbage. I think anyone who replaces words with numbers should be banned from the net.

Are you 4 real? Besides you just contradicted yourself. You said you didn't want give out opinions and then you turned around and DID EXACTLY WHAT YOU SAID YOU WOULDN'T.

All right! All Right! I reserve the right to rant once in a while and try to promote things that are genuinely of interest and not just find the latest YouTube of the guy playing My Sharona with a kazoo up his ear or something.

Along with shameless self-promotion right?

Just for you.

Jeepers, you're pretentious.

Well you're not helping. Who let you in here anyway?

I'm just trying to help, you jerk!

See this whole mission statement thing isn't for me. Maybe I'll just launch projects and threads as I go along.

Way to skirt the issue!

Oh shut up. I'm just going to bookend this post and make that the mission statement for now.

Quitter.