Attention - Gentlemen Jesse and His Men - Introducing Gentlemen Jesse - 2008

So ever since I was 15, my left eye has been noticeably worse off than my right. I wear glasses from time to time, and for a while wore them most of the time. Last summer I lost my glasses and since then have basically been going without. As a Brooklyn resident, I rarely drive and it's such a gigantic hassle to go to a movie in NYC...so I rarely need to pull out one of my old pairs. Most of the time I just make do with the good right eye.

The problem with this is that I've developed a head lean to favor the good eye. Additionally, I am noticeably aware of my left eye going lazy. This has lead me to try a few experiments, which if nothing else, makes me acutely aware of the way my brain process visual information.

Perhaps the one that is the most entertaining involves me blindfolding the right eye to force the left eye to get some exercise. I'll usually blindfold it for about half an hour and then do something that requires some visual work...play a video game, read a book or webpage, walk around the apartment swiftly. After about 20 minutes, when I remove the blindfold, a weird thing happens. There is a few seconds in which I am aware of my brain switching. At first the flood of information coming into the right eye is overwhelming. Then, I can feel my brain realizing that the information is more valuable than that coming in through my left...and in response, the left returns to it's "lazy" state.

This all happens in like 2 seconds, but it's a cool 2 seconds.

Anyway, Gentlemen Jesse sounds more or less exactly like The Exploding Hearts, only with less quality, less exuberance, and fewer dead members.