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Happy Birthday Neal

Blazey and I traveled down to Cincinnati to spend some time with our good friend Aileen's parents this past weekend (Q is in Australia). Mom had a little birthday celebration for her brother Neal who died almost a year ago. A bunch of Neal and Aileen's friends came out to eat up mom's Filipino dishes and send off messages in balloons. OH, so for the past 4 or 5 years (since the day i met Mrs Aquino) she's tried to get me to eat pork. Well she finally succeeded with a little trickery. She told blazey and I that she made everything pork free for me this weekend. I start eating this amazing broccoli salad with turkey bacon and comment on how good it is and mention something about the bacon being turkey. She then says, "yeah, you don't eat pork that's why i told you it was turkey bacon". But she told it so dry that i didn't know if she was joking or not. I take a look at the fatty bacon on my plate and can't help but start cracking up.

View all the photos after the jump

Wall*B

We're shooting somethings for Nationwide today which required us to build this wall and find all sorts of props for (which I would love to work with my girl Megan Terry on). Last night I stayed late and finished painting and cleaning up the studio. I set up my little G9 to shoot every 2 seconds. It worked great until my battery died a couple hours later without me realizing it.

The song is from Beck's new album that i can't seem to get enough of. It's titled (the song) Modern Guilt. There is one line that I seem to catch every time I listen – "I lost my baby 10 minutes ago".  I dig it.

What Goes Up...

If it's wack, it has to be taken down. Today we broke down the huge pods and replaced them with the incredibly sleek Muji desk. I couldn't be happier, even more when I get a chance to work in the office again. I'll be in Columbus from tomorrow til friday night working on a project for Nationwide.

Aaron dumped the pack of screws in the box which immediately sank to the bottom.

Now my Japanese is a little rusty but i'm sure that they got the instructions wrong. The diagram said to put the washers between the legs and the table tops. Completely wrong.

Mom & Snipper

The other week blazey tried to put me on the spot for not heading down to see the family in Springfield. So just incase he tries to front on me again I want to show some photos from the other day - Dinner with mom and my step-pops, Snipper aka Loren F. Browder Jr. I racked my brain trying to find a place for dinner. Mom doesn't eat red meat, pork or sea food and snip doesn't eat Chicken or seafood – yes, chicken! Once i met up with them at the Book Loft they told me the local Max & Ermas was just fine.

Snip: (I'm not sure how he got the name) Loren is going to look just like him in 35 years.

The place mom insist i bring "teeny book girl". The one on the right is Max and Erma's original location in German Village

Big Snip's tat from way back.

They were getting ideas for their back yard from the B&B I stay at (German Village Guesthouse)

Mom's hair is fly

Went Underground Lastnight.

I went down to the Knitting Factory to hear some hip hop last night. In particular this cat named Spec Boogie. He came out blazey's party the other night and i knew his name was familiar but not until his joint "From the Heart of Bed-Stuy" came on did i realize that he did one of my favorite songs from a couple months back. I would put up the song but now I can't find it on my computer. Bed Stuy - Spec Boogie. I just wish he spoke more on specifics in the hood.

[audio:http://wordbk.com/audio/Bed-Stuy.mp3]

Produced by Von Pea of Tanya Morgan

Donwill of Tanya Morgan. They were supposed to perform but delay's in Denver held them back.

VonPea showing us his buddy passes which apparently wasn't the best way to fly out of denver and still make it on time to a show.

Spec Boogie

George from round the way.

The bartender got this shirt in '88

My new favorite lyrisicst (that is different from all around rapper/entertainer) is Wale. I put on his mix tapes when i fly and have nothign to read. You want to pay attention to everything he is saying. Incredible. I'm hoping to check out the show in a couple weeks.

We Got Desks

These desk (or pods as Herman Miller calls them) arrived and were assembled monday afternoon. I don't know if it is just NYC but the craftsmanship on everything thus far has been terrible. They had no clue the the hard backing and padding goes between the orange walls so we could use it to pin thing on. The little closet things are falling off and the left parts to the desk in the box cause they couldn't figure it out. sigh

And i feel like these pods are just a bit too big for our space. Well, not too big just along with our table and seating area it is a bit crowded. We are going to attempt to change it soon.

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I rode my other two wheeler in Monday.

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Dear Herman Miller,

You make desk. Make the desktops out of a surface mice can work on with out a mouse pad. Those things are so 2001.

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Office Progress

ologie office And on the second day they got paint and cork walls.

We don't get the 'net til next week so until then I have to constantly search around the office for the free wireless sweet spot (i think i found it on the windowsill)

More photos:

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Moving In

This past Friday I spent most of the day waiting for several deliveries of furniture. The stuff in the black plastic wrapped cases were the Herman Miller conference table and chairs. I'm a bit concerned about the table. My preference would be to have one big table that acted both as our desk and a conference table (and not round) but i'll just have to save that for when I pay for everything myself. The couch is my favorite piece so far – old, cracked black leather leather. Today our IT guy, Chuck, is coming to get the phone lines working and maybe set up the T1 line (or is that next week?). He asked for authentic brooklyn pizza so for lunch there is no better place to take him than Grimaldi's Pizzeria over by the bkln bridge. Ive got a feeling im going to know that place very well pretty quickly.

of course i'll keep you updated with the progress.

Today At Work I...

...shot a few Ologie employees. Collin is our web guy, css html flash and all that jazz. The tats are of his mother and father's middle names.

Pam was our stylist for the day. Looking great at 50+

Profoto Pro 7b packs and a couple heads. I needed two more heads to get the exact look I was looking for. I wanted to use a beauty dish for the key and a the soft box for some fill and two lights to blow out the background and to add some highlights on the jaw line.

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That's me.

We Got the Keys.

Here it is, our new office space in DUMBO. Soon Ologie will outfit it with everything we need to be a full on design studi; Eames, Herman Miller, Apple products...all the standard hip furniture and equipment. In a few weeks, if you are in the area, call us up and we'll do lunch Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass

It Ain't No Joke

I kinda hurt my back yesterday and I figured i needed to see the doctor since i can barely get out of bed. The video shows me walking pretty well (hunched and slow but still okay) but that wasn't the case 95% of the time today. Yeah i rode ella which was probably was a mistake. While I was sitting waiting for some lame advil prescription I got bored and walked creeped around the store looking for magazines

Things I buy

I spent my last few hours in Los Angeles shopping/looking around on Melrose. Other than a bunch of stuff in Fred Segal, i didn't see much else until i happened upon this fresh little shop called Fitzsu. PLAYSAM from their website:

Playsam products are beautifully designed and finished sleek wooden toys from Sweden. They have been recognized for design excellence by the Swedish National Museum and individuals that appreciate their elegant simplicity and fine craftwork.

Black Q-Tips (I looked for the black toilet paper when in Paris but I didn't find it)

Cards that Boom. This one says Happy Birthday

I love building blocks. These are mini.

The Dunny is from Kid Robot. Love me I'm French

A Bathing Ape Shopping bag and canvas tote bag.

We've been drafted

After a bit of deliberation, we decided to take jump and try something a lil' different. Yes, Our Own Thing has been very good to us and allowed us to run our own show for the past 2 1/2 years but now it is time for (catch word of the year) change.

We've been flirting with ologie for the past year or so when they came to us a few months ago and opened up talks about working more closely together. They liked our experience in real estate branding and our photography portfolio. And just as important, the culture that b and i have (even though we are small) meshes well with their culture. A few back and forths later here we are, official Ologie employees or "ologist" as we are now called.

Who is ologie? They are a branding agency based out of our old town of Columbus, Ohio (no, we can't get away). They have an incredible branding portfolio, great people, a beautiful office, and a lady that makes fresh lunch every day.

Are we moving back to Ohio? We are still working and living in NYC. Our new office will be in Brooklyn's DUMBO. We'll be in there in a couple of months but for the time being we'll be working in ohio (blazey flew out this morning) and at home.

How will we work? Blazey and I both took Senior Designer positions although most of my work will be photography based.

What happens to our own thing? We still own our company but it will no longer act as a deisgn firm. We have some other things planned for it.

How do you really feel about this, bk? Well, this is all brand new and such a big change it will take me a while to really grasp what we did. It will be my first time working for someone else since doing something similar my first few months in nyc (I kept my job in ohio and traveled back and forth almost weekly). I've yet to wake up and go to an office every morning (really saves on the water bill). But I love to travel even if it is back and forth to ohio. I love photography and ologie seems to respect my work. I really want to get out of this home office everyday. I can't wait to work with other designers again. Lastly, the next most important thinthing after being happy, it was a good business move for us (at least that is what we are betting).

Stay tuned. We will soon have a bunch of new things for show and tell…

Ologie's website: ologie.com

Escape from NY (again)

This weekend Blazey, Sonya and I are in Tucson Arizon for Comron's wedding. He and Blazey have been kinda like bffs for since way back when they were youngins. The photos here are from this morning at rehearsal. (yeah, i'm the wedding photographer if you couldn't have guessed already. No, I don't do weddings*)

Put On - Jeezy ft. Yeezy: Hit play this then look at the photos. If i could wear headphones while i shoot tomorrow i would have this on repeat.

[audio:http://wordbk.com/audio/puton.mp3]

Tina is back from her world travels (here for her blog)

* unless your wedding is somewhere I haven't been yet and I can party with you after the first dance.