Post Power Nap Blaps!!!

so i took a late afternoon power nap, ate some dinner, and banged out a couple jawns...

SLIM DUGGY:

Slim duggy by mercurywaters

VELO RAW:

Velo raw by mercurywaters

DR WHO

so i'm a child of pbs. i grew up watching british television on late night pbs. benny hill, are you being served, one foot in the grave, and of course, the ultimate...DR Who. The real dr who. Tom baker with the 15 ft long multi-colored scarf. the scourge of the daleks. the delectably attractive assistant who changed every few episodes, and the stubborn, belligerent robot dog who always gets him out of a jam. i always wanted to travel space and time in a phone booth that was at least 3000 sq ft on the inside but looked deceptively normal from the outside. and of course, now you ask, why am i going on a random rant down memory lane about dr who?? because this beat i made reminds me of the theme song. i've sampled plenty of dr who in my day, but none of it really captured the who sound when it was done. it was transformed into something else. then there's this beat, "loss stop", that contains no dr who whatsoever but feels like 2 am in the 8th grade dozing off to the sound of laser beams and late 70's synthesized orchestral pieces. anyway....

Loss stop Rendered by mercurywaters

Anniversary weekend pics

Click Here for all the pics

6 years

So my wife and i celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary this past weekend. Since we're both chefs we usually mark special occasions with a venture into the confines of a creative restaurant. this occasion was no different. we started friday night with a bit of cultural enlightenment with a Nikki Giovanni speaking engagement. Charlotte isn't the most culturally advanced city in the country, so when good stuff comes to town, i'm trying to make it a point to be a part of it. The event was fun and packed with people. it started off with a disjointed jazz band, the queen city collective. the sax player had extremely weird and spooky eyes. like there's a human foot in my horn case spooky. the percussionist was pretty good. the drummer was decent but insisted on beating his drum set to a bloody pulp every chance he got. loud does not equal good. the bass player was non-existent and the guitarist seemed to do nothing but solos. next came the warm-up poets. some of which were truly inspired and others who were just cliched. the final warm up act was a singer by the name of joselyn something or other, i can't quite remember. she had an amazing voice and pretty decent songs but none of which were really suited to win over a crowd of people who were unfamiliar with her work. nikki giovanni was insightful and witty and told long winded stories that went around the moon and landed miraculously right back in the seat of your soul and conscience. Jacki loves to hear the wisdom and experience of older people and i love to hear older people swear. Mrs. Giovanni didn't disappoint either of us.

we planned on eating dinner at cabo fish taco afterwards, but an hour wait and the college drinking crowd eventually turned our compass in the direction of a more adult neighborhood of restaurants. we ended up at 300 east. situated in an old historical house, it was a strange mix of trendy and vulgar. the restaurant was a beautiful 2 story affair, but marked the difference between the mens and womens rooms with wooden dog cutouts. the mens room pooch included a much too life like pink doggy penis. the hispanic bus boy who floated the restaurant was quite the sight with a backwards baseball cap, fake 10 kt diamond studs and an iced out hollywood t-shirt that left us both asking where in the world was the manager. we have a combined 30 years of experience in the restaurant and hospitality industry and to have such a sight in a fine dining establishment is a capital crime. yet undaunted we push on. our server (who didn't tell us his name, which is my wife's pet peeve) said the menu hasn't changed in 20 years, but the ever trendy sesame marinated miso salmon seemed to say otherwise. I started with some baked goat cheese with roasted garlic and sundried tomato which became my lubricant for every piece of bread i could find for the evening. very delicious. Jacki had the chicken tortilla soup which had no tortillas in it. she could only describe it as spicy. not good but spicy. She cooled the spice with the house cocktail, served in a mini-pitcher. it goes by the name of the matilda wong(??) quite a nice drink if i do say so myself, and i'm not a drinker at all. the entrees came right after our first bite of the appetizers...way too early. For the main course jacki had the trendy salmon and i had the rib special. The salmon was nothing but excellent, served with tender sauteed spinach and flavorful mashed potatoes. My ribs were pretty so-so. the ribs were lukewarm and devoid of any fig flavor in the fig bbq sauce. what they lacked in fig, they made up for way too heavily in the cumin department. the star of the plate ended up being the incredibly smooth and sweet honey butter served with the side of cornbread. my jasmine rice creme brulee for dessert was very well done. smooth and creamy with the perfect caramelized sugar top. Jacki went for the disappointing carrot cake cheesecake. a dense flavorless cheesecake set atop a thin slice of mediocre carrot cake. the whole experience was basically hit and miss. good enough to came back but not good enough to rush back.

Saturday proved to be more fruitful. we started with brunch at LULU. another former home turned restaurant. i'll keep this one quick. jacki had a ham and cheddar quiche. light and flavorful with a crust so tender you could enjoy it alone without the filling. I had the creme brulee dipped french toast with a side of heaven. that heaven came in the form of stone ground grits with pimento cheese. YES!! LULU is definitely a winner. we will be returning soon. we next continued with an excursion to the Daniel Stowe Botanical Gardens. The weather hovered around 60 degrees with a slight breeze. perfect weather for a journey outdoors. even in the late winter of february with the garden only showing about 25% of its worth, it was still a pleasure to behold. beautiful walkways with fountains and canals. quite the romantic backdrop. and the fact that it was february kept the crowds to a minimum. The real star of the garden was the orchid conservatory. i can't even the describe the beauty of these flowers. once i get the pictures developed i'll post them up. instead of doing a restaurant for dinner we decided to cook. Jacki did the appetizer which was a sight to behold. a tower of perfectly cooked plump scallops and lobster tails drenched in butter and olive oil with a side of fresh made potato chips. if the meal ended there, it would have been a success. for my course i made a peach and horseradish encrusted lamb chop. the chops cooked a litle more than i would have liked but they still proved to be quite tender and juicy. on the side i paired it with a warm salad of roasted golden beets, kohlrabi, roasted peppers, shallot, baby portobello mushrooms, tomatoes and smoked gouda cheese. i wish i had taken pictures of it all. i think we were too busy grubbing on some good food than thinking of preserving the moment on film. thats pretty much the gist of the weekend. a great time had by all.

African American Audiophiles

So my father is the only audiophile i've ever known. for those who don't know, an audiophile is someone so obsessed with the purity of reproducing sound that they'll buy a solid lead turntable and connect it to a $10,000 pre-amplifier with 3 pounds of pure copper cable and connect that to a $10,000 amplifier and finally finish it off with a pair of 8 ft tall $20,000 speakers. its an insane exercise in excess and useless detail to me, but my father loves it. i've learned a lot about sound and music from him and his obsession, so i guess i can't hate on it too much. but anyway this leads me to todays creative output. he wants to start a blog or magazine that can represent an african american audiophile perspective. basically something not so tainted by advertising dollars and elitist attitudes. not that that is something exclusively caucasian, but a lot of the existing audiophile publications tend to display this air of audio aristocracy which tends to recommend the purchase of equipment from whichever advertiser has the biggest ad in the mag. somewhere along the lines of fleshing out this idea we came up with the title dashikis and decibels. so a logo is needed...

The Obama Effect

Is my wife the only one, who on inauguration day, fried chicken, made sweet potatoes, broke out the 2 liter sodas and invited people over to cry when obama was sworn in. I'm just wondering. Is this the sweeping change to take the country the president was talking about. black folks would feel like they're such a part of the political process that they would coat some chicken wings in flour and lawrys season salt and have a get-together. i'm not one to get so emotional over these types of things but i will gladly benefit from the frying of poultry.

Hott leggs

So my sister-in-law wants to create a hosiery line. Basically fashion forward prints with a focus on plus size women. And due to my joy of plus size women i thought it would be only right to design a logo. like to see it...here it go.

The Electric Company

So the man of many ideas and zero follow through has struck again. The million dollar idea is to build electric stations for this huge wave of electric vehicles that'll hit the market in a few years. of course building a lucrative business model for this is proving to be a challenge. Mainly because electricity is relatively cheap and already available everywhere, so most people wouldn't have a need for an electric station and those that would, would find it hard to leave their vehicle there for the 7-8 hours it will take for a full charge. hopefully all these new cars will come with a 15 min 50% quick charge and then it would at least begin to look like a viable way to create some profit. oh well...if it ever comes together, i made a logo for my company. check it out:

Kanye and Mr Brown

So i got second place in a mash up contest over at sound-unsound I forgot all about it when it happened actually. if i had remembered i entered, i may have had a chance to lobby for first place. anyway, i won a couple pieces of software i'll probably never use. another personal victory for mr waters. anywho check it out.

jb kwest mash Rendered by mercurywaters

The Chameleon Dynamic

First of all...go to obsidianblue.com Recently Blue hit me up because he changed the format of his next album. Originally slated to be totally instrumental, he decided to add some vocals. So in short he came to me to help on a track. I'll talk to Blue and see if i can throw up a snippet of that song, "Ground Lion", otherwise you'll have to wait for the release of the Chameleon Dynamic. So of course when i heard the album title, it got my brain tweaking. So i dug up some chameleon photos and went to work. Blue actually has a cover already, but i needed the practice, so i went at it. And these are the fruit of my labor.

I like the first one a lot. Real simple and basic. The richness of the color in the photo just sets everything off. The second looked really ill when i was making but once i rendered out to jpeg it looked real low quality and unpolished. i may revisit it and see if i can smooth it out. The third one is my favorite. It really showcases the camouflaging ability of the chameleon and allowed me to have fun with the font and coloration of the text.

The Abyss

So here we are. The first post. This is basically where i try to explain how, why, and what i do creatively. Hopefully this will be of interest to someone. HAHA. We're going to start with some graphic design. I like to design album covers and other random visual logos and such. This is pretty basic as it were. I swiped an image and added my name and a suitable album title. Nothing amazing. Check it Out. If i could remember where i got this picture from i would credit the original artist, but oh well. I'm sure they'll see it and sue me and the mystery will be solved in court. I think eventually this will blossom into some music. Probably an instrumental project with a dark feel to it.