Lazarus Long - ProfilesArchive

About Me

"Was he robbed of the asphalt
that cushioned his face?
A room colored charlatan
hid in his safe."
Here comes the mislabeled semi-modern English, riddled with dialect-inspired shortenings and antiquated grammatical constructs.
And this is about me, the myspace heading tells me so!
This space inspires ranting and ravings, all confused-like.
Seems so at least, eh?
Enough with the nonsense.
I am a heart devoted to music largely. See, I have this absurd tendency to keep myself surrounded by sound at all times. Luckily I get to do this for a living in a variety of ways!
I'm a trained sound engineer with an impeccable ear for music of all varieties (thanks RPI for absolutely nothing) and a musician of several sorts with differing backgrounds in each. Foremost I'm a vocalist - trained, but *untraining* to this day. Following that I'm a guitarist, clarinetist and composer. My skill in each of those is somewhat questionable at times! Heh.
Currently I'm solely devoted to the upstart band Tryptich, founded by myself and guitarist Aaron Starkweather to combat the forces of impending world melt down by writing obtuse rock music with incomprehensible lyrics that are somewhere between being about the end of the world and spaceships. I do some acoustic/crazy slap guitar, but mostly I'm just the front man. We used to be called Whale Meets Ground, but the name change seemed fitting...
Back at RPI I fronted the band Hat Trick, a pretty standard rock 5 piece. It was relatively straightfoward pop-rock, but the musicianship was excellent so we were always well received. Two time RPI battle of the bands winners even. 'twas quite a good time. Check out the myspace with the old studio recordings.
Now that I've gots me a diploma, I'm technically an RPI alum, and therefore no longer a member of The Rusty Pipes. However, for those that don't know, they're a contemporary A Capella group. The catch is that they do modern and contemporary rock/pop/whatever music just with the human voice. It's some hot shite, let me tell you. Used to provide Vocal Percussion (beat boxing for you laymen out there), a huge throng of arrangements and to cap it off, sang uber-high tenor. I'm gonna miss those guys.
Hrm...that can't be all...oh yes. My first band at RPI. Sarif. Named my company after them. Cool bunch of guys. Drummer got up and moved to Arizona on a Wednesday. Used to do lead vocals and electric guitar for 'em. The bassist was also my roommate for most of college!
So yeah. That's me. Music. Like I told ya! Gotta love it.

My Interests

Music, largely.
But not music alone.

A non-definitive list:
Films of various sorts
Skiing (Close as it gets to flying.)
Archery
Kendo (Oh how I Cooking (Baking too, 'cause everyone loves baked goods)
Technology (Especially music technology...)
Japan as a whole (Language, culture, what have you)
Guiness. Cold please.
Going places, just driving.
Adventures of any sort.
Photography (Digital. Can't use film sadly.)
Urban exploration, decay and photography.
That'll do pig. That'll do.

I'd like to meet:

..

People with brains and hearts. In the figurative sense.

Music:

Coheed and Cambria, (3), Mew, Jimmy Eat World, The Mars Volta, My Chemical Romance, Say Anything, Muse, Tool, Our Lady Peace, Abandoned Pools, Led Zeppelin, A Perfect Circle, Ben Folds & Ben Folds Five, Guster, Counting Crows, Joey Eppard, SHABUTIE, Phantom Planet, Rush, Yes, Pink Floyd, Splashdown, Sugarcult, Imogen Heap, Tryptich, Dashboard Confessional, The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, Universal Hall Pass, Matisyahu, Duran Duran, Weerd Science, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Fall Out Boy, They Might Be Giants, Siam Shade, B'z, Jack's Mannequin, L'arc en Ciel, Flogging Molly, Weezer, Chevelle, Third Eye Blind, The Goo Goo Dolls, System of a Down, Magma, Gorillaz, Regina Spektor, The Beatles, Frank Ticheli, Something Corporate, Leonard Bernstein, Keane, Stephen Sondheim, Prima, The Loyalty, Echoes, Mika, Subject to Change, The Early November, Hat Trick, Utada Hikaru...

God, this list is so long and it could just keep going and going...

Movies:

In no particular order: Garden State, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Requiem for a Dream, Nightmare Before Christmas, From Hell, Moulin Rouge, Big Fish, Serenity, Advent Children, The Departed.

Always more, but that's enough.

Television:

Carnivale, Firefly, Trigun, Full Metal Alchemist, Samurai Shamploo, Dexter, Farscape, Ugly Betty, Futurama, Deadwood, Battlestar Gallactica, Stargate (SG1 & Atlantis), Huff, Entourage, Boston Legal, Heroes, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Rome, Invader Zim, Clone High, The Sopranos, Family Guy, American Dad, CSI (But only the original), Law & Order, Weeds, Flip that House...

Books:

A Prayer for Owen Meany, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (Or any other Heinlein), A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Memoirs of a Geisha, Hitchhiker's Guide Qunitilogy, Lord of the Rings Trilogy, The Myst Trilogy, The Deathgate Cycle, anything by Anne Rice, Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake novels, The Stars my Destination, The Dark Tower series, American Gods, House of Leaves and others. If we're talking graphic novels et al...The Second Stage Turbine Blade/Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV books are quite good. As is Johnny the Homicidal Maniac (which I consider required reading), Squee and I Feel Sick by Mr. Vasquez. Also, The League of Extraordinary Gentleman by Sir Alan Moore. Throw in some manga, like Trigun by Yasuhiro Nightow and Furi Kuri by Hajime Ueda. Pretty good cross section there methinks.

Heroes:

Start with Claudio Sanchez. Certainly Joey Eppard as well. Other musicians that are heros...Jim Adkins, Gerard Way, Freddie Mercury (rest his soul), Frank Sinatra, Brahms (to go way back), Kaki King and maybe Eric Clapton. As far as non-musicians go, Robert Heinlein (for countless obvious reasons), Tim Burton, Douglas Adams, John Irving, Alfred Hitchcock, J.R. Tolkien, Immanuel Kant, Thomas Jefferson...who else? Oh, Johnny Depp, great actor. And Jhonen Vasquez. Because insanity is requisite for heroes in my book.

My Blog

A year ago

A year ago things made a great deal of sense.It was my final semester at RPI.There was a girl in my life who I loved very much.My band had begun to play shows together in its newest incarnation.I was ...
Posted by Lazarus Long on Thu, 05 Apr 2007 08:07:00 PST

New York, NY

I have an odd history.Somewhere along the way I became who I am.But who I am is so lacking...I am so off putting. I don't draw people to me.Where I feign confidence it comes across as arrogance.Where...
Posted by Lazarus Long on Tue, 07 Nov 2006 09:08:00 PST

Survey

TELL ME ABOUT YOURSELF - The SurveyName:Robert J. Pruyn-BushBirthday:December 26th, 1984Birthplace:Glens Falls, NYCurrent Location:Queens, NYCEye Color:BrownHair Color:BlackHeight:5'9"Right Handed or ...
Posted by Lazarus Long on Mon, 23 Oct 2006 02:42:00 PST

Skimmer

The skimmer, skipping the top bit off.Big false numbing whir of motors.There, drain'd away.It keeps in jar, so this get shelved.You get used to scream.There's a shell around it.We've got the penetrati...
Posted by Lazarus Long on Mon, 23 Oct 2006 01:29:00 PST

...

On my own, so very utterly.So much for history and companionship and love.And with such perfect timing...I just want to keep driving and never stop...*heartbroken*
Posted by Lazarus Long on Sat, 07 Oct 2006 11:30:00 PST

"And I will get what I deserve."

My emotions, threating with each heartbeat to undo me, subside at last and I am left with a terrible blankness.A lack of feeling. A state where I am moved only by sensation and aesthetic.I am dr...
Posted by Lazarus Long on Tue, 03 Oct 2006 08:17:00 PST

-to rest-

Threedead endsand a chunkof a decadedecrepitand passed by.Too manytimesremindedof thetranspiringemptinessthat fillsa gap inthe historyof a boy.Too harshto repeator recallwith anyviracityor detail.Many...
Posted by Lazarus Long on Tue, 25 Jul 2006 11:56:00 PST

Of course, it's unfortunate.

His arms caught the sides with a concussive groan, then a snap like the sudden breaking of a rib. The skeleton frame of the deep tunnel caving in around the small form falling seamlessly from he...
Posted by Lazarus Long on Tue, 09 May 2006 12:57:00 PST

Of the Great Shapers

His Red Army covered the face of First Earth. We called it that long after we departed for the skies. The Blue Third built the dreadships that let fire rain from the heavens and those who ...
Posted by Lazarus Long on Thu, 23 Feb 2006 01:55:00 PST

New Seven, Bastion of Third Earth

They did it.It took them 2 years of around the clock labor to bring the vision of the project to reality. It took 10,000 tons of aluminum and close to 500,000 tons of steel. It borrowed th...
Posted by Lazarus Long on Sun, 12 Feb 2006 10:59:00 PST