This is a great quote from my friend, the highly successful photographer/artist, Taco Jim:

I look at thousands of images every week. I see so much repetition of ideas and poses and locations that it depresses me. Then I see that same repetition in my own work, and it inspires me… inspires me to erase everything and start again in the opposite direction.

He’s a brilliant taco, that Jim.

You should stop by my other website: FuzzMartinMedia.com. And if you have, thanks! I hope you stop by again sometime!

From A Tribe Called Quest. This is a song that I loved when I was a kid. I’m not going to lie… last week I saw a beautiful woman, and all I could hear was, “bow bow bow, bow.” (That’s my literal translation of the guitar line in the song). Bonita Applebum has been stuck in my head ever since.

Too much information? Perhaps. But too much information should make up for the lack of information I’ve been posting, lately.

Enjoy.

This is an exclusive FuzzMartin.com psychology experiment. Open up iTunes and sort your entire library by “play count.” Look at the top five (at least) songs. I am willing to bet that those songs tell a lot about your life, your moods, and your experiences. Now, this doesn’t really take time into effect, because you may have gone through some high or low stretches some time ago that may have included a lot more music-playing time – or you may be going through a big experience now, but your playlist hasn’t had time to catch up to what you’re currently experiencing. Either way, it will be fun to look at.

Post your results in the comments section and let us know if it works.

Mine (right now):

1. I’m No Superman (Lazlo Bane)
2. Lost One (Jay-Z)
3. Nothing Lasts Forever (Maroon 5)
4. Flake (Jack Johnson)
5. Mexico or Crazy (Jason Boland and the Stragglers)

And yes, mine’s pretty close.

…to Jessica and Jeff (my sister and brother-in-law). Congrats on six years! I believe September 27th was my grandma and grandpa’s anniversary, as well – so congrats to you two, up There, too.

I like the Cool Kids… their work reminds me of the old-school stuff that I used to listen to when it was considered ‘new school.’ And… I like this song. I know that Black Mags is old my now, but it’s new to me. Actually, Simon McConico told me about it in January, but I just remembered to listen to it.

That is all.

…author, Michael James Caughill, from this morning’s show.

Get The Abortionist online at Amazon.com.

What do you think of Fuzz Martin?

As seen on AsSeenInWI.com:

I was finally able to read The Abortionist, by Michael James Caughill.

The Abortionist is the story of an ex-Milwaukee police officer, Elliot, who was left paralyzed after he was shot in the line of duty. Now, instead of fighting crime, Elliot spends his days writing a well-known crime blog. When the recent murders of a serial killer hit close to home, he is pushed into helping the police solve the crimes.

The first thing that you will notice about this book is that it is distinctively Milwaukee. From the names of businesses to the street names, you can actually see exactly where the murders are occurring. If you are lucky enough to have met Michael Caughill in real life (he is a Milwaukee blogger and runs the site FromWhereISit.org – the same as the blog mentioned in the book), you will even picture Michael as Elliot. For the record, though, Michael does not use a wheelchair in real life*.

The storyline in Caughill’s novel is terrific. Though the chapters flip-flop between Elliot’s encounters and those of the twisted Abortionist, it is very easy to follow along. The love story seems real, almost if it was written from experience. The murders are gruesome, but they have to be in order to keep the story in tact. The language is conversational and allows you to actually believe that you are listening to Milwaukeeans speak their native tongue.

Pick up Caughill’s book, The Abortionist, today. You won’t be disappointed.

*though I was almost disappointed when I read that Elliot has hair. I’m sure it was wishful thinking by Michael.

Here are some shots from my recent photo shoot with J Rilla, a rap artist from Sheboygan (the 2009 Kiss Icon). We did an interview and photo shoot for my one of my new websites, AsHeardInWI.com.

I’ve been working on a host of new projects. One of them is called, AsHeardInWI.com – it is a site where I will profile bands and musicians of any genre that have roots here in Wisconsin. My first interview and photo shoot was with a Sheboygan-based hip-hop/R&B artist named, J Rilla.

http://asheardinwi.com/artist-profile-j-rilla

Photos from a recent birthday boy’s photo shoot.

Photos from my photo shoot with the McFarlings:

Song = thoroughly stuck in my head.

When I’m not with my daughter, working at the radio station, working the race track, or working on side jobs, you can usually find me riding my bicycle. I haven’t written much about it on FM.com, lately (thanks, Twitter & Facebook), but I am pretty big into cycling and I have been riding seriously for a little over a month, now

When I was a kid, I used to ride my bike all the time. There wasn’t much for a kid to do in Eagle, Wisconsin, besides swim on the lake and ride all over the damn place. There was a loop that I used to ride that would take me from Eagle to Mukwonago to East Troy to Elkhorn to Palmyra(ish) and back to Eagle. It took me about three hours do to on my mountain bike and it was roughly 38 miles long.

Recently, I finally ditched my old Schwinn mountain bike (that I got when I was 13) and purchased a new Trek FX 7.3 hybrid road bike. It’s a road bike with straight handlebars. Don’t get me wrong, I like it, but now that I am hooked on cycling and riding some serious miles, I am considering trading up to a true road bike. From the last week of June through today, I have ridden over 300 miles, and while the bike feels good for the first 20 miles, it is really not very comfortable thereafter.

Back to my point of this article. When I was a kid and we had our mountain bikes, we used to call each other sissies if we would change gears out of the big chainring (gears by the pedals) when going up hills. We would put the cassette (gears by the back wheel) onto the biggest cog in the back while going uphill, but if we changed to the smaller chainring we would ridicule each other.

Until a few weeks ago, I hadn’t switched my new bike off of the biggest chainring.

I have been logging a lot of my rides on Map My Ride and DailyMile.com (best fitness site, ever). While perusing those sites, I have come across a lot of good forum posts and articles by people who ride a heck of a lot more than I do. One of the things that I learned is that the technique that I was using, above, is completely wrong.

Cross-chaining is when you are riding your bike with the chain on the big chainring and the big cog OR the little chainring and the little cog. Those are no-nos, apparently. After about the 200th mile on my bike, I started hearing a lot of chain rubbing and the gears weren’t changing like I wanted them to. It turned out that I had been messing up the settings by frequently cross-chaining the drivetrain.

From what I’ve read, you should be using the middle chainring for everything except for instances when you want to go really fast (use the big chainring and the smallest three or four cogs) or you are going up a very steep hill (use the little chainring and the biggest three or four cogs).

Who knew? I didn’t. Now that I do know, I am shaving a lot of time off of my loop routes and I can smoothly transform between a fast downhill and a steep uphill. It’s a lot easier when you do it the right way.

Just thought you should know.

Prepackaged energy comes in many forms: drinks, pills, concentrates, gels, and candy-like chews. Over the years, I have written a lot about the different energy drinks available. And, until recently, I had only tried one type of energy chew — Kick Brix. It was one of the worst taste disasters that my tongue has ever encountered. Ever.

When I was recently given a few packages of HyDrive Energy Chews to try, I was initially reluctant. The Kick Brix experience left me with a pretty mean learned-taste aversion. I didn’t want the gagging, salivating, and twitching sensations that I was left with after my last run-in with energy chews.

But, I tried the HyDrive Energy Chews anyway.

The directions instruct you to eat two chews right away, then wait an hour and eat another chew, and then wait one more hour to eat the last one in the package. I followed the directions, and to my delight, they tasted great!  I could feel the energy burst quite quickly after eating the first two chews.

I was given two different flavors of the chews – orange and berry. My favorite of the two is orange, but the berry holds its own, as well.

Recently, I have been taking a lot of long bicycle rides. On my last 50+ mile ride, I took along a package of HyDrive ECs. I ate two about fifteen minutes prior to my ride, and then the last two while I was out on the trail. For the entire trip, I had the energy I needed to keep going. In fact, I could have gone even longer if I had more time. Obviously, a can of Monster would not have sufficed on the bike, but those compact little chews packed a big punch and were easily stored in my under-saddle bag.

To sum things up: I definitely recommend HyDrive Energy Chews.

My daughter has some friends over by her mom’s house. The boys are (usually) really nice and she really likes them. It’s her first real neighbor friends since her mom lives in what is basically a retirement neighborhood (not really, but most of her neighbors are probably enjoying liver and onions for dinner right now) and my neighbors are constantly outside smoking – not really my first choice for play friends.

This morning, my four-going-on-five-year-old daughter says, “Daddy, what are balls?” Knowing what she was getting at, I probed, “what do you mean by balls?” She nervously replied, “you know, on your body…”

I said, “lets just call those ‘jubilees,’ sweetie. The word, ‘balls,’ is rude.”

As you can imagine, I needed to find out where she learned her new vernacular… and, of course, it was the older of the two neighbor boys. I figured as much. I’m not really mad, because eight-year-old boys say those kinds of things, but I was taken aback since, well, she’s four.

Okay, time to go teach some boys what a ‘baseball bat’ is (an actual baseball bat, you pervert).

This is a shoot that I did with three-month-old Ryan and his parents, yesterday. It’s best viewed by clicking the “full-screen” button on the bottom right of the slideshow. Enjoy.

http://www.fuzzmartinmedia.com/clients/2009/Ryan/

While remarking about the recent shooting of two police officers, allegedly by an 18-year-old that may have schizophrenia, Milwaukee’s mayor, Tom Barrett said,

I don’t care what these special interest groups say. I want them to see what happens in that hospital room when you’ve got police officers laying there because someone says it’s a great idea to be carrying a gun in the middle of the city. It has to change and it has to change now. I don’t want to go through this again in this community.

Are you kidding me, Tom? Yes, there are SO many special interest groups calling for 18-year-old schizophrenic thugs to carry guns.  You “don’t want to go through this again in this community?” Well, then you better start teaching parents how to better raise their children, eliminate gangs, oh, and find a cure for schizophrenia. This has nothing to do with responsible citizens owning guns, this has everything to do with irresponsible parenting and an inner-city culture of violence.

The shooting was a tragic event. My prayers are with the officers and their families. This situation, however, can in no way be put upon the shoulders of the “special interest groups” that Barrett was referring to. He should be ashamed of himself for trying to cash in on the officers’ injuries, politically.