Chris Reinhard's Reverie Machine

The Damnwells - Golden Days (Acoustic Demo) Best band of the...

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 22:30:37 -0600

The Damnwells - Golden Days (Acoustic Demo)

Best band of the past decade right here.

In case you didn’t know who to thank for that sweet, sweet...

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 16:12:59 -0600

In case you didn’t know who to thank for that sweet, sweet brew you’re about to drink. #coldonecity

"It should be harder to be an artist. You shouldn’t just be able to put a song on YouTube and go on..."

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 16:01:35 -0600

“It should be harder to be an artist. You shouldn’t just be able to put a song on YouTube and go on tour.”

- Miley Cyrus, on the overnight success of Rebecca Black.

[usmag.]

At first I didn’t think I was going to be able to embed...

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 21:08:55 -0600

At first I didn’t think I was going to be able to embed this, and so I thought: it’s 20 minutes, and if I send people away from this I’ll wait…but it’s not likely anyone will see this and actually come back to read what trivial things I have to say about it.

Thank goodness I figured out how to embed this. Now you have to read what trivial things I have to say about it.

For starters, it’s amazing that this woman is able to speak as quickly and as eloquently as she does. Given, she’s a spoken word poet and that’s the whole point of what she does, or her core competency, or what have you. But that’s beside point.

The beginning of the talk, the poem about her daughter, is the single most impressive thing I’ve ever heard in support of “the best way” to raise a child should I ever be lucky (or unlucky) enough to have one. The unwavering sureness of what she’s saying, the way she is so unfathomably ready to raise a child she doesn’t and may never have, is incomprehensible…but somehow, it resonates. It makes sense.

She goes on to talk about how she was inspired by things, such unimpressive things in the grand scale of things…people who told her that they heard and felt what she said and propelled her to keep saying more. How she somehow found a way to be heard, as a young person, and turned that into something more than just influence.

Then she goes on to talk (in that same unwavering and unbroken eloquence) about how she fosters young people to express themselves regardless of how interesting they find themselves to be because, in someone’s eyes, everyone is interesting. Even me…at least, to those of you who are still reading. (Thanks.)

She goes even further as to recite another poem about how as a child she understood very little about the world. How she understood so little but was unafraid to attempt to affect so much regardless of the outcome. It’s unsurprising that she has a sense of how she wants to raise her daughter if she ever has one.

I’ve never had a moment in my life where I felt so sure of something as she appears to feel during this talk. It’s almost as if nothing I’ve ever strived for or imagined to be true has ever been as important. It probably hasn’t. But what’s also true is that after hearing this I imagine that someday, something I strive for will be this important. Something I accomplish will be this powerful to me and to the people who see it, feel it. Something I do will affect someone this deeply and when it does, I’ll know it.

I’ll know it.

That will be my daughter. Whenever she comes around.

improve the system constantly.learn new things quickly.respect the people who make your job...

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 10:45:03 -0700

improve the system constantly.
learn new things quickly.
respect the people who make your job possible.
contribution is the key.
it’s us against the world.
we are a family.
have a point of view.
take risks.
make everyone love you.

This will be the last time I ever post a photo of Carmelo...

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 09:47:37 -0700

This will be the last time I ever post a photo of Carmelo Anthony on this blog. (Probably.)

It’s not for spite, it’s not for a lack of appreciation for what Melo has done for Denver over the past seven years. It’s a new lack of interest.

Unfortunately for Denver, the bevy of pretty-good-but-not-star-quality players coming to the Nuggets in return for Melo will probably keep us in the hunt for a playoff berth. And if we get one, next year will be even worse. While the final culmination of this season’s most ridiculously drawn-out trade story isn’t nearly as heartbreaking for Nuggets fans as ‘The Decision’ was for those in Cleveland, it’s just as telling of the new way. Unless this summer’s collective bargaining agreement can promise players like LeBron and Carmelo won’t have the last word in where they go and for how much, teams like the Cavaliers, the Nuggets, the Minnesota Timberwolves—teams in markets with less than a few million fans—will never compete for titles again. Sure, it can be fun watching slices of the All-Star ballots go up against one another week in and week out throughout the regular season, but what of the smaller cities?

I’m going to miss Melo and I wish him no ill will; I only wish that the whole idea of the game was 30-some teams battling it out, parity ruling the league and the probability of surprises still something we can count on. Instead, we’re looking at a likely six-team league beginning to solidify over the next few years. I’m in Denver and I don’t plan on leaving…which pretty much leaves me screwed.

Now basketball’s just like baseball.

Photo

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 11:02:35 -0700

A buddy and coworker of mine, Andrew Hoffman, and his awesome...

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 08:45:00 -0700

A buddy and coworker of mine, Andrew Hoffman, and his awesome girlfriend Allison Shaw are doing Denver right with a new clothing line. Aptly named Denver Clothing Company, the line currently creates limited edition t-shirts (in runs of just 25) designed locally by various movers and shakers of the creative community. I just picked up the logo tee shown on the right of the collage above; the feather tee on the bottom left was designed by Hoffman himself. Travis Egedy of Pictureplane notoreity is next on the brand’s list of featured designers.

Denverites (or Denver fans), grab yours now.

I don’t usually go for anything besides raw or rinsed...

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 10:53:00 -0700

I don’t usually go for anything besides raw or rinsed denim, but this pair of Nudie Boot Starcy jeans (30/34) in Core Blue spoke to me. Maybe it’s the fact that the weather is warmer this week or that I know I won’t want to be wearing cold, dark, heavy denim all summer long, but these feel right to me. I can wear them hanging outside a cafe in Aspen or on the Venice Boardwalk and feel pretty good about it either way.

Sorry for writing about something as inconsequential as a pair of jeans. I tried to write about the life and times of a pair of Cheap Monday skinny jeans a while back, but what I realized after ten posts or so is that no one piece of clothing is worth that kind of attention. I’d like to go on about the first pair of Boot Starcy jeans I bought; how they effectively redefined my overall style, how they made me rethink the type of women I was interested in (seriously), why they make me feel more masculine than any other denim I’ve owned. But that they’ve come to mean more to me over the last six months than some ex-girlfriends isn’t the kind of thing I can really put into words. It’s what musicians feel about the guitar they played during their first show, or what filmmakers feel about the cameras they used to capture their first short. I’m a writer…but I don’t use a pen, so I resort to championing the things I wear while producing my own form of brilliance. It’s paltry but it works.

Greg Dulli’s a genius, if you didn’t already know.

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 11:20:34 -0700

Greg Dulli’s a genius, if you didn’t already know.

More Amor - Thanks?

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 11:16:00 -0700

More Amor - Thanks?:

It’s hard not to like something your friends create. Whether it’s good or not is often arbitrary; we all want to support one another and do things that we’re passionate about. (Like this blog. By all accounts this blog is an abomination, but if I tried harder to blow it up I’m sure my friends would get behind me.) Still, every once in a while some friends’ passion will manifest itself into something you actually want to associate with because it actually is good. I feel this way about More Amor.

The band’s debut EP is about as sugary as pop rock music can get, but that’s not such a bad thing. Tom and Kyle’s harmonies are simple, song structures are expected, and the lyrics are about the only thing they truly know: themselves. But simplicity and expectedness are also the strongest attributes of Thanks? because every one of the six songs here are cute (in a ‘you’re so stoned, let’s make out’ kind of way) and earnest (in a ‘I’m so stoned, let’s be honest’ kind of way).

My favorite is “Young Hollywood,” a sort of ode to all the things that remind me of being in LA myself. And that’s the beauty of Thanks?: there’s probably something lyrical on the record any 20-something can find which reminds them about themselves.

Side Note 1: Dubstep breakdown in “Miss Martyr.” Get into it.

Side Note 2: The site hosting the free album download is Is Anyone Up?, the best NSFW site on the internet. Get into it.

"As conquistadors go, I’m more of a Don Quixote than a Hernán Cortés."

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 15:44:10 -0700

“As conquistadors go, I’m more of a Don Quixote than a Hernán Cortés.”

That Group of Girls

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 16:39:28 -0700

That group of girls always has one that comes close, time and again, to making you shun the whole clan forever. That group of girls always seems to eventually end up in a little ball, telling inside jokes that you wouldn’t even find funny if you had context. That group of girls always seems to have a hidden agenda that doesn’t mesh with your own hidden agenda. Everyone in that group of girls has just the slightest something wrong with them, physically, like they’re on holiday from the Island of Misfit Toys. That group of girls gets drunk, yells inaudibly, gets in fights with other groups of girls and one another, dumps out buckets of tears and makes up all in the span of three or four minutes.

Best group of girls ever, if you can get through the first few sentences.

Ladies with cute butts, buy these.

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 14:32:07 -0700

Ladies with cute butts, buy these.

The State of the Union is...

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 11:32:06 -0700

The State of the Union is...:

This is a very interesting (and at times, harrowing) compilation of State of the Union addresses since 1973. Read this, and tell me: how unsettled are you now that you know Gerald Ford is the only president on this list who ever told it like it was?

"I mean, you can have sex anytime you want. Why mess it up by getting emotionally attached to..."

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 16:06:39 -0700

“I mean, you can have sex anytime you want. Why mess it up by getting emotionally attached to someone?”

- Sage advice from MTV’s Undressed

I’m really late to the Olivia Munn party (because...

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 11:23:00 -0700

I’m really late to the Olivia Munn party (because I’m not a nerd who watches TV shows about video games), but seeing this picture on The Superficial today sort of convinced me I’m now holding a membership to the international league of fanboys.

It all started with a video I saw a few days ago, entitled something to the tune of “Olivia Munn’s sexiest moments!” The video carried a simple yet effective theme: clip after clip of Munn moaning, stroking things shaped like penises, grinding her crotch into things and stroking things shaped like penises whilst grinding her crotch into her co-host and moaning. And in every clip, she was making this face—the face she’s making in the photo above, with varying degrees of intensity—and maybe I never noticed it before, but I finally started to understand what sad, lonely gamers sitting alone in their basements love so much about her.

It’s reckless abandon. It’s the kind of emotion that most women I’m familiar with don’t have; a sort of ‘I can play harder’ mentality that, apparently, has me about as interested in what she might be like to kick it with as I am in whether she’s as good at choking that chicken as it seems. If she were one of the boys, she’d be the cool one. But she has a vagina and a kick-ass rack too, so, game over. (Also, this.)

Anybody know her personally? Is she as ridiculous in person as she appears to be on TV? If so, send her my regards (and maybe a picture you copped off my Facebook page).

UPDATE: Found it!

On Reading

Thu, 20 Jan 2011 11:29:00 -0700

“I’m reading The Stranger by Albert Camus right now. It’s boring the shit out of me, but I imagine at some point I’ll gain some kind of knowledge that I didn’t know before….I don’t know, it’s like torture, reading, but I do it and then eventually I think that it’s good.”

That’s a quote by George Lewis, Jr., singer of a cool new band called Twin Shadow. It’s a really horrible thing to say. It resonates with me, though, and I think I know why.

Reading has become an obsolete practice for the born-digital generation. Given that the time we spend between the time we spend with our devices in front of us—from smartphone to iPad to laptop to TV and around again—continues to shrink, reading for education’s sake has begun to feel more and more like a misappropriation of the few precious hours we have to consume content every day.

I, for one, spend so little time reading for pleasure that when I do pick up a book, it serves more as a surefire sleep aid than anything else. It makes me sad.

I think I’m going to try and read more books starting now. But I’m no fool and I care about the environment, so I’m going to do all my reading on the iPad.

"I can’t get into detail about the opportunities I’ve missed in the past, but I can..."

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 14:16:44 -0700

“I can’t get into detail about the opportunities I’ve missed in the past, but I can always promise not to miss them in the future.”

GQ has different men's 10 Essentials. What are yours?

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 16:38:25 -0700

Ten essentials that every man should own? Yikes. I’ll get completely panned for this…but here goes.

1. A good pair of boots.
2. Raw denim jeans, fitted by a tailor.
3. A timeless pair of sunglasses.
4. A traditional baseball cap.
5. A real wallet (preferably leather, or with leather accents).
6. Enough solid-color button-down shirts to last one week.
7. A weekender bag that complements your style, whatever that is.
8. One tie that you can wear with anything you own (this is a bare minimum).
9. A portable device and a pair of (good) headphones you can use to listen to music.
10. Socks and underwear you won’t mind showing to new people.

Ask me anything