Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Cat Piss Tincture

They say that's what's in cologne; this ubiquitous and all-informed they: I think I heard it on the playground. I had to think before settling on the playground, as opposed to a playground. Maybe playground fact-gathering & worldview-assemblage has been on my mind because I stumbled across Garbage Pail Kids images; immediately upon seeing them, my nose was filled with the smell of powdery chewing gum rectangle and my ears tickled with crackling wax wrapper. Their creator went on to be awarded a Pulitzer for his comic about a mouse called Maus.It should be mandatory reading in high schools.


I remember that parents freaked out because they found the cards offensive and disturbing, which served only to make them oh-so-much-cooler. Looking at them now, I have to admit they are a little petite guignol.


On the other hand, they are a breath of fresh dystopian air in a world of Cabbage Patch Kids and innocuous Smurfs, Teddy Ruxpin. Those are the toys that gifted me many a bad dream. A horde of them chased me through the woods like a cult on a heretic; I'd wake up covered in Smurfs Teddy in the corner, just watching and mouthing ultrasonics. Ah! The sweet chokehold of Midwest childhood.


Speaking of which...


I like cruising so-called outsider ART; Ambrose Bierce defined madness as being blessed with a great degree of intellectual independence.


Mary Lieb's work reminds me of you purposeful carefulness.



Final Day - Young Marble Giants

Torso Corso - Lizzy Mercier Descloux

Alone in a Hotel - Mugison

Gone - Carla Kihlstedt

Mansion - The Fall


Monday, April 20, 2009

Atari Force

Goodness! It's been too long. Not that thematic cohesion is something towards for which I am looked, but, as Arbogast says in Psycho, "if it doesn't gel, it isn't aspic." So, here we go.
Everyone's so bundled in Winter and the weather is now not only tolerable but even occasionally rather pleasant; everyone's taking off their coats and jackets; I periodically go through phases where living moving things kind of amaze me (I'll still even stop and think about a squirrel I'm watching as a cluster of molecules that manages through some bizzare collaboration of universal interstices to, not only somehow hold itself together, but also find nuts for the Winter {"Sometimes I wonder about the Creator of the Universe." Kurt Vonnegut [I first had this variety of sensatory realization while reading that and watching squirrels in a park in Boulder, CO]}): bodies have been on my mind. It's strange that I have to try to interpret the emotion being expressed by the face automatically created by putting two or more punctuation marks in a row; the said series, located between CO & bodies directly above, is, while grammatically somewhat correct (with panache), emoting something I don't want to feel. I would text that to someone as shorthand for I'm-putting-Eraserhead-on-and-hiding-under-my-bed. Anyhow. Bodies. Muscles. I fell down the rabbithole of medieval medical illustrations and stumbled upon this curious little site. The pictures are great and the title is overloaded with punctuation marks.


As disturbing as these paintings are, I just can't get over how glamorous they are.


OK. Enough with creepy. I need a sorbet.


That's better. I really miss my friend Jamal that would come into Tracks. He was a Black Panther in Chicago in the 70s, and he would talk classic Motown and revolutionary politics. He gave me tons of old clippings from and books about a variety of underground papers. He just sort of disappeared one day; I later heard he'd died. He drove a bus and was missing a prominent front tooth.


I'm making T-Shirts that say "who told you it was propaganda".

Hmm. It seems kind of boring to talk about posters or cool old-timey sites now. I was reading a nerdy comic book blog (as opposed to the aloof and debonair incarnations) about readers' first experience of having a crush on a comic book character. I thought about it for a second (keeping in mind that all of this is very playground and puppies, why-do-I-suddenly-go-all-funny-when-I-think-about-girls kind-of-way), settled on Dart from the quasi-obscure mid-80s comic Atari Force. That was my absolute favorite title, in spite of the goofy product placement name. I've been looking around for back issues in the local shop. I wonder if it holds up: Swamp Thing did. I can't seem to find many images of my first weird parasocial crush, but there are a few.


"They say that dinosaurs are supposably descended from birds or some shit." -overheard philosophical discussion from a warehouse in my youth-.


Day Tripper - Otis Redding

Walking the Dog - Rufus Thomas

Joe - P.J. Harvey


I Can Dance With Everybody Except My Wife - Ciro's Club Coon Orchestra

Guitar Boogie - Arthur Smith

Friday, April 10, 2009

Kimono My House

When I was posting under the nom-de-guerre of Fussy Records, I'd spend a lot of time looking through Russian photo sites. I love getting lost in websites with scripts I can't read in languages I don't know. It's been a long time since I looked at the fussy site. There's some good stuff back in the formative years. I guess that's what you get when you spend your time dealing with rednecks and biting your tongue. Suffering fools badly fed me a worth of vitriolic petroleum. It makes me think this blog is a wee laconic: I always thought laconic meant lazy or slow. Anyhow, I used to post Russian photo sites all the time, and I'm surprised I've not yet done that here: Российские Картины


I was thinking about religion today, because my coworker asked me about the reason for Passover. Shortly after sussing it out and putting on my asshole atheist pin, I developed an enriched appreciation for the religion of Ancient Greece and Rome spoken so derisively and dismissively of by my Catholic educators. They'd put it across like those folks were crazy for believing in the unbelievable. To me even at such a tender age, the books didn't outdo each other in terms of fantastic reaches and great demands for the suspension of disbelief well past the point of common sense based on my 10 years of personal experience. It heartened me to consider the vagaries of existence through this peculiar Greco-Romanic filter in which I was well-versed. The Bible stuff was pounded into my head and it was pretty easy to remember, at least the exciting bits. As tiresome as the peaceful benificence of the Good Book was, all the more exciting the visceral tumult spewing alluvial reality from the roof of Mt. Olympus came to me to be. Love makes you crazy. People get too angry and do horrible violent things. Winter follows Summer. Their faith not only helped account for Humanity's history of and propensity for unbelievably dumb-ass behavior, but it gave better proof of everything having meaning. If I was in a boat far at sea and a storm more violent than anything came from nowhere, I'd at least have the comfort of knowing that somewhere Someone far more significant than I was ripping pissed about something.


OK. Enough of my yakkin'. Here're some things I've enjoyed looking at lately.


All those lines remind me of the part of my brain that fills my own doodles with too many dots/circles/lines. My own approach towards creating through repetitions of miniature process is, admittedly partly due to an inability to paint a decent bowl of fruit, is rooted in my eye for visual coincidences. I'll see someone on the bus once and recognize them on the street a week later. I'll know a color but be unable to place that smell.


I really need to start studying Russian again. I wish I had someone to practice speaking with because taking notes while watching Ночной дозор with the Russian subtitles on can only take me so far.


My brother told me that power cables like these went all the way around the world. I wanted to build a ski-lift contraption to take me there.


I thinks it wonderfully fitting that you come from the cusp like you do. Capricorn gives you power.


According to the Chinese, you are a Rooster of Metal: I am a Wooden Tiger. I didn't look into compatibility between the two, but I like the sound of it regardless. The above astrological illustration reminded me of this Czech illustrator whom, while quite twee, I've always liked. I found him in Japan of all places. Dr. Karel Čapek was also the first to use the word robot for a robot. I wish they'd make gigantic robotic spiders like this one that you could ride.


My ideal Transformers are far more approachable, like in that one Hume Cronyn/Jessica Tandy movie.


I can't wait to go swimming in Miami.


Thinking about Belly-Dancers the other day reminded me of all the vinyl I bought simply because I'm an absolute sucker for a cheesecake cover. I don't really like Hawaiian music that much.


As a sorbet to cleanse the palette of bellydancing album covers, Japanese cigarette ads throughout the ages... I think they're cigarette ads.

Let's do a quick run through some other graphicy designish bizness. Posters from Asia.



Vintage Posters.


or Soviet-era matchboxes


I stumbled across this looking for rockandrollbandflyer/posters.


As far as all that goes, I still respond to the messy photocopied cut-and-pasted vibe.


Punk purposefully done well or badly, for me, resonates with the Fluxus movement.


Then again, the finger that Dada gives to proper ART always leads my mind to Joseph Beuys. He's such a fascinating storied character, but I remember how good I felt first finding out about I like America and America likes Me. He hated the States and refused to visit. When he eventually did make it to our shores, he demanded to be carried off the plane wrapped in felt so he would see nothing and his feet would never touch the ground: he gave instructions to be carried in this fashion and be thrown into a room with a wild coyote, which he'd adopted as a representative of this land that had been wronged by this nation. He stayed in a locked room with a wild coyote for a week and eventually made friends before being again wrapped in felt and carted back to the Motherland. I have felt his Felt Suit. No shit.




Shi--o - Fred Frith

I Received A Letter - Jimmy Yancey

Bamako Blues - Bob Brozman

Waitin' For My Gin To Hit Me - Ronnie Self

Land Of Snow - Ben Perowsky featuring Miho Hatori

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Take away the elements in order of apparent non-importance.

Admittedly, lots of the stuff here comes across as a little dorm-room/high-school hipster, but I love the Godzilla dresses.


They also have a Divine jacket that is significantly lass-than-so, but it does day "The Filthiest Person Alive."


I remember a summer that was filled with Johns Cassavetes & Waters.

Let's go back to clothing; I love this website: it would be smut if some of the outfits weren't so amazing.


Not that there's anything wrong with smut.


Whatever happened to the classy pin-up?


Off of pin-ups and onto someone who rocks: Leslie Hall (I'm throwing up midwest gang signs {not gang signs of the midwest, but, rather, for...}).



I lived in Amish Country as a youth; the lone theater, set on main street on the cruising capital of the world (No shit. The cruising capital of the world.): Every Saturday, they'd have matinees of the most fantastic classic cinema. Looking back, I'm amazed at the stuff they brought through there. I sat wide-eyed like clockwork up-front every single Saturday for a whole Summer of Harryhausen. Sufficed to say, it had a profound influence on my developing sense of aesthetics.


I always had a problem with anthropomorphizing, and, in all honesty, I still sometimes talk to my tea kettle; "I hear you. I hear you." Still, this game, in the span of 600 seconds, got me to truly care and feel for a handful of colored squares: Seriously, they need to make a movie of this.

Just a graphic blob... Not to deny the impact of simplicity.


Your Mouth - Frank Zappa

Everybody's Gotta Live - Arthur Lee

Live And Let Die - Daniel Johnston

Ti Offro Da Bere - Mike Patton & Metropole Orchestra

Stranger In My Own Hometown - Elvis Presley

Monday, April 6, 2009

nothing can surpass the mystery of stillness

My friend Daniel turned me on to these pictures of empty houses. They remind me of that Tom Waits song, The House Where Nobody Lives.

Oh, and once it held laughter, once it held dreams
Did they throw it away, did they know what it means?
Did someone's heart break
Or did someone do somebody wrong?


Thinking of Tom Waits turns my mind to music and this cat has been blowing that mind lately. He lives in your neighborhood. I'm jealous.


I once went to a hookah bar with my friend, David. Unbeknownst to us, this joint had belly dancers... the world's least authentic belly dancers... one of them had a top hat. The whole spectacle delighted Dave; I just tried to enjoy the hat. Dave turns to me at one point and says, "I think she likes me!" Yeah, Dave. Sure.

Sigh. I think my high school gym classes may have been worse than I remember. Let's get back to puppies and kittens and hand-holding.


When twee goes South.


Looking through old movie posters, I stumbled across Day of the Triffids. You can watch the whole thing here.


That movie fascinated me in my youth, but plants can't walk. Right?


I need to practice banjo. I'm glad I don't have this, or I wouldn't get anything done.



Memphis Slim - Slim's Blues

Pink & Sour - Califone


Maria Bamford - The-Rapist

Jesus Is A Good Name To Moan - Mugison

Mass Romantic - The New Pornographers