A pretty awesome thing happened two weekends ago.
Some of my closest friends from grade school and high school pooled together to have Mike Doughty perform a private show for us at my friend’s parents’ house in Scituate, Massachusetts.

For those of you who don’t know who Mike Doughty is, he’s a singer/songwriter and former frontman for the band Soul Coughing—a band my friends and I loved back in high school and college. Their big hit in the 90’s was Super Bon Bon but after the band broke up, Mike went on to do some great solo work. I Hear The Bells is one of my favorites.

We got him to perform through his PledgeMusic project, Soul Coughing Songs: Reimagined (PledgeMusic is like a Kickstarter for strictly music-related projects).
Since my friends took the initiative to get Mike to play for us, I felt compelled to create some solid (and very limited) concert schwag in the form of t-shirts for all my friends and their wives/girlfriends as well as concert posters. I screen printed them myself:


The t-shirts and the posters both feature the same design, but I gave the posters and extra twist: I made them a 2-color, red/blue design, imitating the old form that 3-D graphics used to take back in the day.
We called the event “3D” because every year, my friends have a 4th of July barbecue and we call it Dogs & ‘Dads. It’s a double entrendre. “Dogs” refers to both each of the dogs my friends own and the hot dogs we cook. “Dads” refers to the fact that most my friends are now fathers as well as the crawdads we ship up from New Orleans to boil and eat.
This year we had a third “D”, Doughty.
3D.
Oh, and Mike sounded awesome.

From the Verge:

Microsoft is planning to cut the price of its Surface RT tablets. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s Surface plans have revealed to The Verge that the price cut could occur as early as next week, with each model being cut by $150.
This totally reminds me of when Apple had to slash the price of the iPad to boost weak sales when it first debuted.
Oh wait, Apple never had to to do that. Doh!
(*If you grew up in the 80s and lived in the tri-state area, you might remember Crazy Eddie’s classic commercials.)

The words of Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson.
via Lifehacker

I like these.

So some some guy built a complete SLR camera from parts he made on a 3D printer.
If you’re wondering what industry is the next one of be disrupted, this is it. Manufacturing is in for a rude awakening. Some people think it’s a big deal Apple is starting to make Macs in the United States, but it’s nothing compared to the grassroots movement to make anything right in your home.
Oh and I love how The Verge article refers to him as a ‘maniac’.
Humans like to do that. Anyone who’s not middle-of-the-road, anyone extreme is labeled a ‘fanatic’, or ‘obsessed’.
It’s actually called passion and it’s required to make art.
Don’t let people make you feel bad about what you love to do.

This week New York is humid, smelly and full of energy. It’s been over a year since I’ve taken the subway to work. The air underground during the summer is as hot as the women and as dense as the traffic.
I’ve missed it.

Copernicus

gdgt’s review of the Ouya:

The Ouya is lovely to look at and the idea of an Android console sounds great, but in this case beauty is only skin deep.
Yeah, yeah. You’re already thinking what I’m thinking.
Design isn’t about how something looks, but how it works.
via DF

From Coffee and Cigarettes by Jim Jarmusch

Jonathan S. Geller at BGR on Apple’s plan to take over the living room while destroying Microsoft and Sony:

By introducing a game controller standard (this is incredibly helpful since developers now can build games that recognize a standard set of button controls and inputs that will work across every single game in the App Store), Apple has started to turn the volume up on Sony and Microsoft. Soon, you are going to be able to play a console-quality game on your iPhone or iPad with a game controller, and you’re going to be able to see it on your big screen television without any effort. This is game-changing!
Stranger things have happened.
Serious question: How do you think Apple’s “hobby” Apple TV is doing compared to Google TV?
Ok, that wasn’t a serious question because I’m willing to bet serious money that Google TV is closer to the true sense of the word “hobby” than Apple claims their Apple TV device is (13 million in sales?). And I’m taking into account all these devices no one is buying.

The episode where everyone is high on benzedrine was the highlight of this season of Mad Men.

GIF via Mad Men Screenshots with Things Drawn On Them