Gland Prix

Chad VanGaalen - Molten Light (via subpoprecords)

Too rare to watch something this fresh and captivating.

"

And then there is Kinkade’s proclivity for ‘ritual territory marking,’ as he called it, which allegedly manifested itself in the late 1990s outside the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim.

‘This one’s for you, Walt,’ the artist quipped late one night as he urinated on a Winnie the Pooh figure, said Terry Sheppard, a former vice president for Kinkade’s company, in an interview.

"

— Dark Portrait of a `Painter of Light’ - Los Angeles Times

A time to expand your horizons

• In my very first semester of college, on the peace-loving Quaker campus of Guilford college, I had a wonderful conversation between myself, my friend Eric Parisi(at the time a Junior) and his assigned roommate for the year - a massive, spindly, red-headed freshmen, a young man less than discrete about his opinion of the modern folly of regular grooming.
• I will call him Rolig as I forget his name.
• ERIC:  *(speaking to Aaron)* That's what I said to him – he was Catholic and I was certain he would appreciate the…
• ROLIG:  Urrrhh, Catholic. I can't support organized religion.
• AARON:  Well, this is a Quaker school.
• ERIC:  It's a kind of self-organization at the very least.
• ROLIG:  Urrrgh, yeah self-organization. But anything else. *(flips a pair of drumsticks onto his pillow)*
• ERIC:  You've thought about this!
• ROLIG:  I'm a nihilist. (*smile*)
• ERIC and AARON:  You…
• ROLIG:  I believe in nothing. *(looks down, wiggles his toes)*
• ERIC:  But that's the thing, Rolig, you've already lost it. Now you believe in something. You're not even a nihilist anymore.
• ROLIG:  Urrfgh *(scratches beard)* but then, if I'm not a nihilist anymore then I really don't believe anything.
• AARON:  You've done it! You are a super-nihilist. You don't believe even in nihilism.
• ERIC:  Then how do you live your life? You must have some kind of principles - Come on, you're not a nihilist…or a super-nihilist.
• ROLIG:  *(fingertips to eyelids)* Uuurgh, I just think that their should be no laws deciding how we should live.
• ERIC:  Oh, you mean you're an anarchist?
• ROLIG:  That too. I decided I was a nihilist in high school.
• ERIC:  Wow, you believe in nothing!
• AARON:  The chaos of high school!
• ROLIG:  *(stretching to touch the ceiling)* I don't eat anything with a limbic system.

I did decree…

Blow it off and blow it

Within the confines of my phone does rest a routine of software that when invoked will record each phrase and mumble that I craft.

Clumsy of mind and physique I neglect this code and pay the price. A few button presses today and I could have put down that idea. No, it was not a revelation or insight. It was an idea and a starting point. And that’s all you need.

Luckily, I have many notebooks. Paper and bits. I have sketched and written pretty regularly since about 5th grade and have lots of material. Only now can I review it quickly and with augmented serendipity. Hardware and software make it so.

Still, there is a sting and a kind of bafflement when you realize that a few moments of idle driving, a clutch of seconds requiring attention, and that little lightning bolt that arced across the inner contour of your skull is gone. But how it glowed! What the fuck just happened? Am I in Texas? Where’s my pinky finger gone off to?

From the notebooks: In praise of that forgotten idea, even if, given its unknowability, could very well have been not much more than a tagline for an imaginary carbonated beverage, come now some potentially equivalent in quality and charm ideas/sketches/pictures

1. A Breakfast cereal: Pretzel Blasts!

2. Imagined Titles:

   • “Things that were Said Before the Shooting Started – ‘Want Not: Shon’t Not’”

   • ‘Nuff Nuns: The St. Albans Story

3. An illustration of the Twilight Hamburger Lounge on a hill with a car coming down a road on the hill with the headlamps visible in the fog.

4. Double self-portrait: I am Eric Struggs. Who is Eric Struggs other than the tautological self? A pen name for the visual author. A rugged lothario who keeps time for no man. A film noir digital Dick. The avant Krebs-bearded hero of the pitiful and desperately lonely. A shadow with teeth.

(What the fuck?) Indeed.

Also, This picture from months back, found while skimming that bardo state of the Lightroom library:

Comicsgirl & Night Owls →

Thanks to Comicsgirl!

In my slow road back to full comic book appreciation it is little articles like this that are most rewarding. Night Owls, by the Timony twins looks great – I love that illustration style, and Comicsgirl runs a nice site.

View high resolution

Remember when you were 18, out-of-school and drinking beer, or tequila and orange juice, or even (sweet Jesu on the rock!) peppermint schnapps, and you thought just maybe you were a robot? Or maybe it was your parents that were robots? And it was about 11 AM and you wanted to go to the main branch library in the slightly bigger town.

To read from the history of science collection.

To see your cute and very fun blonde friend from art class.

And all that ill-advised drinking and brooding eroded you. The drunkenness was bad. However, you did discover a genuine pleasure that summer. Really, you loved a very particular beer.

For me, in those halcyon times, that beer was Saranac Summer Ale.

Alas, I can no longer drink that beer for the desperate swirl of memories it recalls.

But this beer, sampled in immodest quantities by myself recently, recalls the purest memory of that Saranac brew. And it does it without drawing the associated dark places as vividly.

Tasty, light, alcoholic. Well played Great Divide!

View high resolution

Wow

Never seen this before. Looks great. Must find more photos.

goodoldvalves:

Volvo GTZ 3000 (design by Zagato)

Filmotype Ginger →

Finding it very hard to resist Ginger!

Simonson’s Filmotype fonts are addictive.

MID-YEAR Refresh

INs & OUTs

Well, it’s almost the middle of the year. Time for INs & OUTs! Ready, set, go!

---

INs → OUTs:

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Alternateens → Alternadults

Chicks in masks → Chicks with D***s

D → 3D

Racewalking → Rock climbing

Meta-historical narratives → Retro-nowism

Human toil → Magical thinking

Hydraulic brakes → Brake Position Sensors

Fauxmotioneering → Acting

Quinoa → Spelt (what are either of these things?)

Foley Artists → The Force

Cheesemaking → Clubbing (also clubbing of seals - always passé, that)

Agnosticism → Prognostication

Blood Red → Pantone 15-5519

===

That’s it for the first half of the year. Join me in December for the list of things “I GOT HORRIBLY WRONG”, which is not a prognostication.