Rich Seymour's stochastic statements.

Just as a preface, I luv Lee Ranaldo (I was listening to his From Here to Infinity solo album today in my car) and especially the look and sound of his guitars that have predominantly been Jazzmasters retrofitted with Fender Wide Range Humbuckers. I’d waited for a long time for fender to make one officially, and since it looked so sexy when it came out, I decided to get it. This guitar is worth more than my car… but far more troublesome…

letta:

Hello Fender,

I recently became (as far as I know) the first person to purchase a
Lee Ranaldo Jazzblaster in Los Angeles. I bought it at Sam Ash and
returned it for a replacement after I noticed that one of the pickups
was installed rotated 180 degrees. Sadly the 2nd guitar I got had
even more problems, but I kept it.

The replacement guitar came out of the box with the pickup selector
switch in the body cavity. Apparently a rather large zinc lock washer
was put in instead of the proper sized washer. I was so interested in
getting the guitar and playing it that we removed the pickguard at the
store and rescrewed the switch on. The nut was hiding in the case.

Then after having the guitar for a month or so and playing around with
setting it up I noticed that the neck pickup cover was skewed in
relation to the coils and base of the pickup. Since the base holds
the pickup to the pickguard, I had to adjust the screws unevenly to
get the cover face parallel to the front of the guitar. This of
course left the coils and base off kilter from where they should be.
I’ve decided to get the pickups rewound so the base will get
reattached to the pickup cover. Yesterday at band practice I noticed
that one of the pickup mounting screws was gone. It had no doubt not
been screwed in enough due to the skewed pickup cover.

So I write asking for 3 things:
1) The proper washer set for the pickup selector switch
2) A screw for the pickup
and finally
3) more quality control on your USA made instruments… the skewed
pickup for example has someone’s initials on it, yet it is clearly
screwed up! This is the 3rd new guitar I’ve bought and the first
Fender. As the only new American guitar I’ve ever had I can say whole
heartedly that it had the worst out of the box build quality of any of
the three. The other two were made in Korea. I will admit that the
color scheme and finish are great. The nitro is already wearing away…
which personally I think is awesome.

Let me know if you need pictures, a serial number, etc.

Have a good weekend.

Thanks,
Rich Seymour

There are 59 skulls in this image

Originally uploaded by schuhlelewis.

While I’m blogging, quantity instead of quality, I will toot my own horn in the vapid vortex of internet memes and their usually unattributable nature. One day this image went all over the internet blogs like Andrew Sullivan, for example… (he’s gay and used to be republican, but then liked Obama?! Crazy! I think he made a living off of those facts, and writing some good stuff for the Atlantic. I dunno, he’s super indie or something.) Anywayz, he was just one in a line of non-attribution regarding this image…

I, being about a day ahead of internet memes (slower than boingboing/pitchfork/videogum editors, but faster than let’s say… CNN) had already seen this image on some wild clicking spree that I like to call my ‘me’ time in between compiling stuff and removing hair from my head in my research. So yeah, I had seen this image and new it was like a real image, not some 10 minute photoshop done in Aviary or whatever… so I went about finding it again. Unfortunately the history function of web browsers doesn’t work that well when you have like 3 computers with 2-3 browsers installed on each… but I did find it, and alerted the original guy.

Then as you can see in the comments, the original blogger of the pic (who didn’t attribute it) thinks for a sec that I made the pic… it’s as if that blogger is physically incapable of even attributing things properly. Kind of like Mitt Romney saying recently that Bush was responsible for getting us out of our recession. You know what… we, the people, are responsible for that… imho.

More gory, vaporous details in the comments on the flickr page.

You can buy this and some other even way cooler prints from the artist up on etsy.

From the LA Times: latimesblogs.latimes.com/movies/2010/02/missile-command-movie-fox-hollywood-videogame.html

Missile Command has been optioned for a movie by fox. This was the first video game I ever had. My parents bought me the redesigned atari 2600 after the nintendo came out. Actually Asteroids may have been my first game, but Missile Command was in there.

They have a little screenshot of the game… but… the whole thing about the game, the whole rapture of the Atari gamebuying experience (or any games of that early extremely pixelated era) was the box art:

From Atari Age

That’s your movie right there.

So. Life. Yea. Well if you’re like me, you could use some music to be the background. I’m at this crazy err well semi crazy LA goth night known as bar sinister. Just saw my homie Paul’s band Triple Cobra play. They are from SF and they honestly rock.

In other news, Treasure Mammal, bromance, get it. That’s what I am saying. Get that. Get religious about it.

In hmm other news, preorder the Clark 8 7″ Snooze!!! clark8.com/7inch Thanks to all of you that already have. Killer!!! We’ll be getting it pressed ASAP.

Yes, LA jus’ drive me crazy. I was up hiking in Malibu today. 3 hours good times. Nice to do something other than sitting. I’ve got about 2 songs done for the rpm challenge with 2 more mostly done. Only need 6 more. Eeeek.

I would write an in depth article about this, but I’m too lazy to properly research it. Bottom line is somewhere between 2006 and 2009 Ben Davis, world renowned San Francisco based clothing company, moved its manufacturing to the Dominican Republic and China. Prior to 2003 they had a unionized labor force… then that year UNITE (www.unitehere.org/) went into something to get them to raise their wages. They eventually did… but… perhaps to the downfall of Ben Davis as USA made brand.

Evidently UNITE is a bit slow to notice when one of their union brands goes overseas, since they still list Ben Davis there. Perhaps Ben Davis is still union, but I think they would keep union made on their label if they were.

I love unions. But are they complicit in the loss of jobs in the US? I’m not one to say.

That said, American Apparel makes all manner of pants down here in LA, they just don’t make pants that last more than 2-3 years… … and their travler’s chinos are way too short for me.