Gland Prix

Chad VanGaalen - Molten Light (via subpoprecords) Too rare to...

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 23:26:00 -0400

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..."

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 14:15:00 -0400

“

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

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 00:23:00 -0400

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…

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 00:51:00 -0400

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

A Breakfast cereal: Pretzel Blasts!
Imagined Titles:
- “Things that were Said Before the Shooting Started – ‘Want Not: Shon’t Not’”
- ‘Nuff Nuns: The St. Albans Story
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.
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

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 00:31:00 -0400

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.

Remember when you were 18, out-of-school and drinking beer, or...

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 22:32:00 -0400

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!

Extremely well-made answering machine message pre-produced for...

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 19:49:22 -0400

Extremely well-made answering machine message pre-produced for you by RadioShack sometime in the 80s I’m guessing. Many thanks to the Grizzly Bear Egg Cafe for including this and several more on episode 82 of their show.

They’ve been on a roll lately. Looking for their description of the final battle in the original animated Transformers movie.

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

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 16:59:10 -0400

Wow

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

goodoldvalves:

Volvo GTZ 3000 (design by Zagato)

Filmotype Ginger

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 22:08:51 -0400

Filmotype Ginger:

Finding it very hard to resist Ginger!

Simonson’s Filmotype fonts are addictive.

MID-YEAR Refresh

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 20:54:35 -0400

INs & OUTs

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

INs → OUTs:

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.

Reading Habit

Tue, 11 May 2010 00:57:21 -0400

The Secret is Out

I never finish books.

If I’ve talked to you about a book I’ve “read” in about the last 10 years then it’s something of a fib.

I can’t finish a book. Sure, there are a few that I make it through 100%: Infinite Jest (perhaps somewhat ironically); A few mystery novels. Most books are read through very close to the end - a chapter out, 20-30 pages, give or take.

There certainly exists some psychological reason or an apt symbolism for the failure to reach the back cover. But I can’t figure out why I keep doing it. I never plan it. I just never finish a book no matter how much I enjoy the writing or story.

This is true of hundreds of books.

The blame I think belongs to The Corrections. I loved reading the first ⅔ of the novel. As the ending drew closer I felt the author losing it and going easy. I feared the disappointment to come and never let it reach me.

And I’ve never recovered. It’s a terrible habit – like smoking, or commenting on blogs.

I think the blame belongs to a very nice woman I met years ago. A friend of a friend of my sister. I was a teenager and impressionable. I had shown her a great piece of scorched metal that I intended to use in a piece of artwork. It had a curl that folded along a charred edge almost like a great tin page. The intention was to straighten the sheet and use the metal as a background or surface.

She saw me fiddling with that fold to straighten it and told me to leave it curled.

“That way you’ll always want to know what’s behind there. It will keep it’s mysteries.”

This habit keeps me from writing and talking about books with the energy and force that I once used. It’s not fair being this passive aggressive and dumping/praising an author whose work you’ve not finished to the last page. Instead I feel OK about discussing the writing of a novel but not the book in its entirety.

There’s a difference, right?

I can only blame myself. I’ll keep those phantom endings at bay and give the author the benefit of the doubt. I find the endings to novels (from what I remember) always unbearably overloaded with expectation and projected hopes. Better to leave them somewhere, in the country, where they can run.

I also never finish audio books.

I want to make this!

Sat, 03 Apr 2010 23:49:32 -0400

I want to make this!

Muse

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 23:28:13 -0400

Inspiration hits in two common ways:

We experience something that feels so attainable and similar to our own work – a challenge and a confirmation of our own meager talents.

Or, we find ourselves before something truly awesome and resolve to grind harder and longer to make something so radiant, out-of-reach and masterful.

The trick of life is figuring out which one of these experiences we’ve really had.

Which muse has seduced us?

The Advisory Circle — Sundial (iTunes link)

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:37:00 -0500

The Advisory Circle — Sundial (iTunes link):

Listening to this I see Adam West and Burt Ward leaping in slow motion towards some terrible abstract fate. Wearing their costumes, smiling.

So, the Brothers Quay made a Rice Krispies commercial

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:51:00 -0500

So, the Brothers Quay made a Rice Krispies commercial:

Hmmm… Thank you Krispies!

"…All these stupid men are always measuring their dicks. Mine does it for real. And with a knife...."

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:59:00 -0500

“…All these stupid men are always measuring their dicks. Mine does it for real. And with a knife. Also, it’s the knife he got from his first girlfriend, who was almost like a mother to him.”

- From: The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño

I hope you’ve already read Bolaño. If not, you should.

Internuts.

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:28:34 -0500

Internuts.

Someday Guillermo del Toro will be asked where he came up with...

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 22:15:00 -0400

Someday Guillermo del Toro will be asked where he came up with the idea for some spindly monster in one of his movies and he will say, “Have you ever watched a border collie?”

Look Back in Danger

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 17:27:33 -0500

Two sides to everything and shame is no different. Shame can be a guide and shame can claim that which it has no business owning.

I’ve spent a lot of time suffering and fretting and generally feeling pretty shameful about the things that I have not accomplished in life. The truth is that no one cares. And no one cares in a good way. No one is disappointed that I have not revolutionized the art world with new conceptions or re-imagined artistic themes. No one spends their time wondering when my next, or first, great novel is coming out. The people I love and trust could care less about these unspoken goals that I’ve manufactured. Thank you for your inconsideration friends and loved ones!

But maybe I care? And I do, to some degree. Feeling that it is important that I’ve created something and then feeling bad that lately I’ve not done a whole lot of creating could be positive. Such reflection could be stimulative. Instead I’ve spent more effort generating and then succumbing to my own supra-lofty goals than is remotely justifiable. The real problem (problem being that which inhibits accomplishment) is that I’ve sought the disaster of living in the past. The only part of me that has thrived is that part which feeds on the morose. This is some leftover remnants of depression - surely. What else but depression seeks to kill your vitality with your own emotions?

The truth that I can see about it now, now that I’ve tried to sort it out with writing, is that depression chose my most cherished part of me to kill. I say depression “chose”. Depression is like the trinity, an impossible orchestration of being. It is both within you and without you - but it is not your self. It is a distinct and individual enemy. Too often, though, this enemy is so close that you have no chance to see how it distorts your mind. It is phantom limbs and doom-colored glasses.

This lack of clarity is what has transformed my shame. Instead of impetus, shame has laid claim to the very faculties it should have emboldened. Writing this down has let me see this. Thank you, words; thank you, phrases; thank you, paragraphs.

Good grief! Poor little character palette - not getting the...

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 23:30:00 -0400

Good grief! Poor little character palette - not getting the attention necessary so he decides to hitch himself to the coattails of Mr. OS X Keychain. You’re better than that CP. No matter how much you hurt inside - Keychain is way more needy and is probably jealous of you.