Archive for May, 2009

(They do not move.)*

Saturday, May 30th, 2009

I saw Waiting for Godot with Nathan Lane and Bill Irwin and (I am so surprised to say this), it was so very very good. Before we get to the play, here’s a cool thing I saw in New York en route to the theater. In an attempt to curb tie-ups in Midtown Manhattan, Bloomberg has shut down Broadway near Times Square and put out lawn chairs in the middle of the road. Seriously. Cricket and I sat there for twenty minutes just enjoying the breeze and the seven gazillion blinking bright lights all around us. (Photo taken with Cricket’s phone, sorry for the not-so-great resolution.)

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I hope they continue this, because it was so lovely. Cricket was miserable because he despises the city and longs to be around trees and no other humans, but I was thrilled.

Anyway, Waiting for Godot. I had to read the play and write a paper on it in college, and lemme tell you, it is a slog to read. Do you know what the play is about? It’s about two guys named Vladimir and Estragon (French for “Tarragon”, I call them Voldemort and Estrogen), waiting for another guy named Godot. They’re just killing time. Waiting. For two hours onstage. You watch them kill time waiting. The end. Here’s a sample of the dialogue.

“What do we do, now that we are happy?”
“Wait for Godot. Things have changed here since yesterday.”
“And if he doesn’t come?”
“We’ll see when the time comes. I was saying that things have changed here since yesterday.”
“Everything oozes.”
“Look at the tree.”
“It’s never the same pus from one moment to the next.”

Seriously, two hours. There are two other characters, Pozzo and Lucky, and they come in and cause a bit of a diversion, but mostly it’s dialogue like the stuff you just read. It is brutal, just brutal to read. However, when put in the hands of Bill Irwin and Nathan Lane, specifically Nathan Lane, it becomes moving, and funny. Nathan Lane can make anything funny. He makes this funny. I don’t know how he does it. If you’re going to see a performance of Waiting for Godot, this is the one to see. Just one comment:

Lucky’s big moment is this long speech in Act I. If taken as a whole, it is complete gibberish. If you break it into smaller chunks. you can find meaning in it. All I could think about while Lucky was doing his speech is how similar it sounds to that famous internet clip of Miss South Carolina giving her answer on education:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww

I cannot use the phrase “such as” anymore. Damn you, Miss South Carolina!

*The title refers to the final stage direction in the show:

Vladimir: Well? Shall we go?

Estragon: Yes, let’s go. (They do not move.)

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Cool art I found in my perusals of the internet.

Monday, May 25th, 2009

What a great football – I totally want it:

http://www.brosmind.com/projects/50

Terrific origami fish made from money:

http://www.booooooom.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/booooooom_580_02.jpg

Phenomenal concert posters:

http://wellmedicated.com/inspiration/50-amazing-gig-posters-sure-to-inspire/

New and Improved Buggies.

Sunday, May 24th, 2009

I drew some bugs as a study back in the day, to try out different drawing styles.

insectdrawing1.jpg

And now, new bugs! Better! Buggier!

insectdrawing2.jpg

I’m going to do interesting things with these bugs. Don’t know what yet, but something. I’ll keep you posted.

I got more Africa pics!

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

First, some pictures Cricket took of some incredibly cute bebbeh vervet monkeys:

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Then, so pictures sent to Cricket from the morning walk where they saw the rhino and conveniently didn’t die:

afrika-909.jpg afrika-910.jpg

And another thing I didn’t mention is that a big thing in Africa is vibrantly printed cloth.

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It is common to print political leaders on them.

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I saw these fabulous cloths with Obama on them while I was in Africa. The best part of them was the artist had put a star on his lip, as if he was wearing lip gloss. So fabu. And, lest you thought I was kidding, I found a shot of it.

obamacu2.jpg

Music videos I have to learn all the dance moves to one day.

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

Of course, the Thriller dance (which starts at 8:30 on this video):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtyJbIOZjS8

Daft Punk’s “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” hand gestures (the good bit starts at 1:38):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2cYWfq–Nw

OK Go’s “Here It Goes Again”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv5zWaTEVkI

And Beyonce’s “Single Ladies – Put A Ring On It”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mVEGfH4s5g

Star Trek movie review. Might have spoilers. Prepare yourself.

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009

But first, I saw They Might Be Giants again! I wasn’t planning to, but they were playing near my home (Tarrytown Music Hall) and it was only $28.00 for the ticket, so I thought “wot the ‘ell” and went. B. told me they had rewritten “The Sun Is A Mass Of Incandescent Gas” and sho’ nuff, TMBG performed the new version. Turns out they got all the facts for the song (song lyrics here) from one of those 1950s Golden Books everyone had as a kid. And, it also turns out, that in the 1950s, the scientists were wrong about a lot of their sun information. So the new song is sung as “The Sun Is A Miasma Of Incandescent Plasma”. I still like the original better, so even though the information is outdated and incorrect, I will continue to sing it and I hope TMBG will too. At least they have other informative songs, like “The Mesopotamians” and “Mammal” (where I learned the term ‘monotreme’ – Go Echidna!).

Yep, saw the Star Trek movie. In the IMAX, no less. And it was explosionalistical to the max. I was concerned when I went to go see it, because I am not a Star Trek fan of any kind. I know very basic rudimentary information on the show, and here is the length and breadth of it.

James T. Kirk is Captain of the Enterprise.

He’s got a doctor on board named Bones who says, “Dammit, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a (something)!”

Kirk also has a guy on board named Scottie who’s an engineer or something, and says, “I’m givin’ it all she’s got!” in a heavy Scottish accent.

There’s a nice black lady named Uhura who Kirk kissed and it was the first interracial kiss on TV, I think.

Them there’s Spock, who’s a Vulcan and doesn’t have emotions and has pointy ears.

Also, tribbles.

Aaaaand that’s it. So when I went to go see the movie, I was justifiably wary. I think I caught all of it. Here are some things of note:

– Anybody else think the Romulan ship looks like a Bloomin’ Onion as interpreted by Geiger?

– Speaking of Romulans and They Might Be Giants, the actors playing Romulans has prosthetic foreheads on their real heads. Which caused me to sing the chunk of the song ‘We Want A Rock” by TMBG (Lyrics: Throw the crib door wide / Let the people crawl inside / Someone in this town / Is trying to burn the playhouse down / They want to stop the ones who want / Prosthetic foreheads on their heads / But everybody wants prosthetic / Foreheads on their real heads). See, I never got that song. Obviously it’s about Romulans coming and destroying your planet. I understand now.

– Kirk makes out with a chick who’s completely normal-looking, except she’s painted bright green from head to toe. COME ON. Really. She looks exactly like Elphaba in the musical Wicked. There’s no reason for her to look like that, it’s distracting and stupid. She could have at least had funky scales, like Mystique in X-Men.

– Uhura and Spock are clearly gettin’ jiggy with it, which doesn’t make sense for two reasons. One, why would you want to have intimate relations with someone who doesn’t really express emotions? And two, isn’t Kirk supposed to be romantically involved with Uhura?

– I LOVE that Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead) played Scottie. Have you seen Shaun of the Dead? The first half is absolutely fabulous. So, yay, Simon Pegg.

That’s all I can think of. I don’t really get the whole Star Trek obsession, but it was a nice film that had lots of neat-o special effects, and that’s pretty much what I was looking for.

Maps.

Friday, May 15th, 2009

I was just doing work for, you know, work, and I had to find a map of the world that shows the continents clearly. So I typed in “world map” into Google and found what I was looking for (thank you Google). I also found this map from 450 B.C. of the world according to Herodotus.

herodotus-world-map-1a.jpg

This isn’t a regional map, people. This is the WHOLE WORLD. Look at Europe. It’s just a sort of, “Yeah, Europe, it’s *vague hand gesture* up there… somewhere.” It totally reminded me of that famous New Yorker cover of how New Yorkers see the world.

new-york-center-of-the-universe-new-yorker-cover-steinberg1.jpg

So, from 450 B.C. to 2009 A.D. = nothing has changed.

I made a mirror. It’s very Louis the Fourteenth meets recyclables.

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

The title there pretty much describes it. The long story is that here at Publicis, there are window display units where worker bees can show off their talents and skills and one display space came up and I had the opportunity to fill it with my shtuff. The CCO has to approve all the content first, because, you know, you can’t have pieces that has a woman bending over showing you her goodies while simultaneously giving you the finger and killing a raccoon with a hatchet and a word bubble comes out of her mouth saying something about how advertising is the work of the devil or something like that. It has to be nice art. We’re not trying to rile people up as they walk to and from the copier. Luckily, all my work classifies as nice art, nothing upsetting or vulgar, so that worked out well for me. But the CCO said he liked my soda can mirror I made a few years back and he would like me to display that. Here’s a pic:

mirror.jpg

Unfortunately, it’s too big for the display space, but when the CCO says he likes something, you best produce that thing or something very close to it. So I had about a week and a half to make another one, which I did (clap clap clap for me). One this one I decided to go with one color family and focus more on the pattern. So I bought a case of Fresca cans (they have a nice pattern, go look at one one day and you’ll see) and made a pattern loosely based on an ornate faux-rococco frame I saw online. I hammered all the little bits of tin onto plywood, added a mirror, and poof! A mirror is born.

fresca-frame-lowres.jpg

Now my bedroom is covered with little bits of sharp tin can, which is awful, and if I didn’t walk around barefoot all the time and have good callouses on my feet, would also be very painful. But the CCO came down from his pretty swanktastical office and saw the display and said he liked it, so it was all worth it.

Fugly Wugly. Also Twinkly Winkly.

Monday, May 11th, 2009

I work in the costume jewelry district of New York, so on my way to work I pass a great deal of very large, very sparkly jewelry. I’ve grown quite accustomed to seeing a variety of stuff, but the other day I saw some pieces in a window that stopped me short. They were just SO big and SO sparkly… I mean, who buys this stuff? And wears it? And where is this place of the wearing of the mega-garish jewelry? It’s certainly nowhere I’ve ever been, and I’ve been to a variety of weird places, trust me.

necklaces1.jpg

This are some big honkin’ chunks of vividly colored crystal. Yep.

The baobab painting – now with dung beetle!

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

I finished the dung beetle and affixed it to the baobab surface, and voila! An ode to my trip to Africa. Now, I realize the dung beetle looks like he’s balancing on a meatball, but I figured I would leave a majority of the grassy bits and twiggy bits and seedy bits out of ball o’ dung. I figured most of my audience could figure it out.

dung-beetle-baobab-painting-lowres.jpg

I think it turned out pretty good. I especially like the beetle. I love drawing insects, I really do. Remember B.’s moth?

moth-small.jpg

And my various other insect pieces in my portfolio… yeah, I definitely love the exoskeleton-ed.