rather than showcase the obscene amount of amazing work (that you should be picking up from these talented folks via gigposters anyway), i conned a very small handful of participating artists (friends both old and new) into sitting still for just a moment…

the above was taken a while back… we’re now 17 weeks into this new adventure. (apologies to all we have not yet been able to tell in person.)

and too soon to know whether it’s a boy or girl by the way. may opt for a nice surprise on that issue in any case. more to come. all fingers and toes crossed.

there’s a lot of talk these days about whether twitter and other micro-blogging services have killed blogs. while i tend to agree this is very much exaggerated, my own online publishing behaviors have suggested otherwise. (allow me to now disclaim the obvious: i’ve never considered myself a blogger.) in any case, i must now admit i am drinking a good amount of “twitterade.” which brings me to another pattern of “less is more” that has been emerging since the summer…

i’ve always been blessed with a variety of interests, hobbies and passions: various design and web projects, building and racing bicycles, writing and performing music, working on cars and much more. however i’m hitting that critical point where the necessary focus and discipline just gets harder and harder to maintain as the responsibilities grow. unwieldy. unsuccessful. unsafe at any speed. so i’ve decided it’s time for me to slow down. take deeper breaths. spend more time with those i love. smell the coffee. downsize. take the time to do things to the standard i want, whether that be a music project or finishing the bathroom cabinets.

therefore i’ve made some fairly dramatic changes as of late:

• pulled the plug on the paper south. this was by far one of the toughest decisions i can remember having to make, after three years of amazingly good times with the finest and most talented gentlemen around. i could produce a much more detailed and in-depth analysis on the subject, but in short came down to me needing to make music on my own terms.
• scaled down my freelance activities, which i have increasingly less and less time for due to the full-time job anyway.
• failed to renew my bicycle racing license. stopped shaving my legs. (you have no idea how much time this alone has saved me.) now riding just for the love of it. with less endurox, no agenda… and no particular place to go.

as a result of these and a few other changes, i hope to reveal two new special projects in the very near future. stay tuned… i can’t wait to share them with you.

as i’m cooking myself with cathode radiation this week due to the tour de france, i thought i’d re-publish the following rant… in short, a geeky rationalization to avoid purchasing an expensive new bicycle. originally published july 2007. (at right: sporting my new ride and bikehugger kit during the MS150 charity ride from houston to austin this past april.)

on the eve of this summer’s tour de france, i thought i’d ignore the doping scandals for a moment and share my passion for the sport with a little rant on modern bicycle design…

people generally want the latest and greatest. this is especially true of the road racing community (don’t even get me started on triathletes). truth is, we’re all susceptible to marketing departments and those inspirational pictures we see in our favorite cycling magazines. so aside from shelling out some very serious cash, what’s a gearhead with a love of fancy bicycles to do? i’ll begin by delving into why a one-hundred-year-old design remains relatively unchanged.

position is everything
every now and then some really geeky folks ask why new frame designs such as recumbents aren’t adopted by road racers. heck, they are more comfortable and aerodynamic. in addition to subcultural factors and official organizations that idealize tradition over change, the bottom line is acceleration. a traditionally-shaped frame allows one to take advantage of body weight and gravity to more efficiently generate power on those painful climbs…

where am i going again?
the ability to see the road ahead, as well as the rest of the peloton during a race, is also a critical factor here. more experimental and more aerodynamic designs inhibit safety in this regard. i don’t know about you, but when my little computer displays any melon-crushing speed over twenty miles per hour, i want to clearly see where i’m going.

body meets hood
the visibility factor of a bicycle on the road is another issue altogether. when i’m getting hit by a car on a bike (which may have happened a few times over the years), i personally prefer to be on a traditional frame that puts my body a bit higher than a recumbent. not that it makes that much of a difference, but at least i have a better chance of getting up on the hood and away from the wheels. or maybe even being seeing beforehand.

they just don’t make them like they used to
walk into your average bike shop and most likely someone will try and sell you a sexy carbon and/or aluminum bike made somewhere in the far east. you’ll soon discover a nice bike is going to cost you an arm and a leg. now one can make a great bicycle frame from pretty much any material (even a renewable material like bamboo) — but frankly most riders need something more durable than what the top pros are riding (bikes which are built to be raced on for only a season or two at best.) and hey crashes happen… that $3000 carbon frame you were on? yeah sorry it’s toast. oh, that $1000 steel frame i was racing on? yup, i can look into getting it repaired.

the weight obsession
no doubt picking up a lightweight bike with your hands is something that feels good… it’s something you can quantify. keep in mind that the greatest cyclist who ever lived explained: “it’s about 90 percent rider, 10 percent equipment.” now eddy’s little equation here refers to the top levels of the sport… and while that equation may be true for top pros like lemond in ‘89, my calculations reveal that most of us are somewhere in the “98% rider, 2% equipment” range. let’s do some math on this one: the difference between a trek madone frameset and the waterford steel frameset with similar componentry is about 4 pounds (not too mention thousands of dollars). that’s quite a bit on the old digital scale — but being that one has to actually ride a bike, let’s not forget to put our body into our equation. when considering a rider weight of 170 lbs, the difference in weight between these frames is slightly over 2 percent. and while i’m no mathematician, we’re really talking about 2 percent of the 2 percent rider factor. as a friend of a friend once said regarding light bikes and your body: “just don’t get the fries with the happy meal.”

sizing up the competition
when you pull up to the start line, it’s never that guy on the brand-new cervelo r3 that you have to worry about. see that crazy old coot on the vintage tommasini? odds are he’s going to kick everyone’s ass — because experience counts for a lot in this sport.

in conclusion, i’m no hater
i’m not some neo-luddite set against new tech and innovation here — i’m just saying we need to get our priorities straight and get back to what simply works best. look at the cost versus the benefit. while fancy and expensive new bicycles are good for the development of the sport (especially at the top levels)… me? someday i hope to be that crazy old guy at the start line intimidating those with much more expensive tastes… and let my legs do the talking.

as i get older, it gets harder and harder to simply make time to be creative. (some will obviously note that i don’t yet have children and thus have no freakin’ idea.) well in an effort to keep my knives sharpened a bit (and to abuse illustrator’s live trace feature), i whipped up these flyers for an upcoming paper south show with fires were shot. being that the event is part of “shoegaze sundays” at the hole in the wall, i went back to my astronomy-obsessed roots and worked from an old soviet stamp design. played in terms of concept, but i had a good time with it.

(the real bonus of this particular evening is that you get to see the infamous johnny ray wilkins perform in both scheduled bands.)

i must admit that initially i was pretty upset. (this was by design one of the worst-looking myspace pages ever for the record.) i mean hey… i had always carefully managed and crafted my online presence. from my defunct designops blog to more recent projects to my job, i kept somewhat behind the curtain for numerous reasons… never feeling completely comfortable with sharing my thoughts and ideas online, whether personal or industry-specific. i have a poorly-maintained linkedin profile and have been tagged on flickr here and there… so who am i kidding? where was my sense of humor? each of us… like it or not, can be found online in certain and imperfect detail.

while the entertaining imposter page is now deleted (i’ll have to save my unproductive and depressing adventure with myspace’s customer service for another time), the whole thing got me thinking about my lack of participation and mixed feelings. i have learned to revel in the fact that many folks now think i enjoy right said fred’s “i’m too sexy” in that ironic hipster kinda way.

in short, crisis equals opportunity. i’ve decided to resuscitate shawnokeefe.com — knowing from this experience that if you don’t contribute to your identity online, someone else surely will.

thanks to adrienne, noah, eric and lya for the inspiration to get back on my virtual feet.

and special thanks to my pal kirk of course. i must give props where they are due for pulling off such a good prank. just don’t forget… on the web, turnabout is fair play old friend.