Archive for November, 2014

Two important items.

Friday, November 28th, 2014

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope it was a delicious and filled with good company. Two things came to my attention recently: first, there’s this special owl. He was found in the forest and now he lives on a stump in a wildlife center office. His eyes are filled with vitreous gloop (as all eyes are) but he lacks a cornea or retina, so he’s blind. And this owl has strings running through his eyeball goo. All of this leads to making this owl’s eyes look like galaxies. He’s a tiny magical owl. His name is Zeus and I am mildly obsessed with him.

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And, wonderfully, people are making art inspired by Zeus. Because, in case you didn’t catch it, he’s a tiny magical owl. Who can maybe see into the future. It’s nice to see I’m not the only one who thinks Zeus is THE KEY TO THE UNIVERSE.

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The other thing I noticed recently was television’s inability to learn from mistakes. I’ll explain. There has been a glut of redneck reality programming in the last few years and almost every show has had a tragic flaw. There was “Duck Dynasty” where one of the members of the family said some hateful, small-minded things. There was that show on MTV with the teenagers in West Virginia, I think it was called “Buckwild”. One of the teens died from carbon monoxide poisoning in a truck. There’s “Gypsy Sisters” which also films in West Virginia and where one of the cast members was caught stealing almost $15,000 of merchandise from a Target store. And, of course, there’s the recent “Here Comes Honey BooBoo” situation which is deplorable. I would think at this moment the cable channels would look into another area of society to mine for reality shows, but I realized I was incorrect. I’m not exaggerating, when I first saw this I thought it was a parody or a joke of some sort.

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I’m kind of disgusted with myself, but how badly do you want to see this show? I want to watch it mainly for that little kid. I hope nothing bad happens on this show due to poor judgement of the people portrayed. Between running a funeral home and wrasslin’ for funsies there’s so many ways for this to go horribly wrong and I would like it if they could somehow navigate this quagmire of potential catastrophes and come out okay on the other side. That would be just great.

All kinds of items from the internet.

Saturday, November 15th, 2014

1. The world wide web has given us many treasures over the years. One is Birds With Arms. It’s a Tumblr. With Photoshopped pictures. Of birds with arms. Enjoy some of my favorites.

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Also, Drunk J. Crew. Someone noticed that the models in the J. Crew catalog tend to look inebriated. They added text to the pictures. The rest is magic.

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2. I was pottering around and saw this phenomenal artist Dashi Namdakov. He does Mongolian-infused artwork in a myriad of mediums. Giant bronze sculptures:

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Small sculptures:

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But (not surprisingly if you’ve met me) the work by him I simply adored was his jeweled creatures.

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Addendum 12/3/2014: Look at the commercial I saw today! http://www.tastefullyoffensive.com/2014/12/birds-with-arms-star-in-this-funny-new.html

A classic and a possible new classic.

Monday, November 10th, 2014

I saw two movies recently, Gone With The Wind and Boyhood. Gone With The Wind I saw ages ago on TV with commercials poppin’ in every ten minutes which really chopped up the experience (it’s tough to get into the Civil War when you’re perpetually interrupted by smiling white people wearing backwards robes like cult members). The Alamo Drafthouse in Yonkers was showing the movie in one of their smaller theaters so I, my father (who is one thousand years old and saw the movie when it came out in 1939), Snorth and Snorth’s mom flounced off in our finest garments made from curtains to check it out properly with a good screen and sound system and no commercials. Here’s something interesting about the movie: it totally holds up. The first half, the half that’s about the Civil War, is thoroughly engrossing. The second half is a bit melodramatic and romantic, but it’s still pretty great. Here are some thoughts I had.

1. The last line makes me so bummed out. It is, famously, “Tomorrow is another day!” Yeah, yeah it is. So was yesterday. And two weeks from Thursday? That’s a day too. EVERY DAY IS A DAY. Whatever. It’s fine.

2. No matter how bad it gets for Scarlett (starving, unwashed, wearing the same dress for a year) her eyebrow game remains on point. Good for her. Also Vivian Leigh has the best RBF of all time.

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3. This movie’s alternate title should be “Crying and Sweating in the South.” Lawd have mercy. I am not exaggerating – in every single scene at least one character is weeping copiously or is slathered with dewy drops of sweat. If it was a drinking game you would be sloshed in the first hour.

4. I’m all for tasteful classy ladies of society, but I really wanted to hang out with Belle Watling the local madam. She wore vibrant outfits, had lots of money and her home had a crystal lamp shaped like a peacock. She didn’t have to go to those stifling affairs all the fancy plantation owners did. Team Watling for me.

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The other movie I saw was Boyhood. The movie itself is not what’s amazing, it’s how it was made. Boyhood was filmed over 11 years with the same actors, so you get to watch them age. It’s amazing that Richard Linklater (the director) got all the actors to show up for a few weeks every year. It’s well-acted, it’s beautifully filmed, engaging things happen, all it’s missing is interesting dialogue. Maybe I’m lucky but so so many of my conversations with people are fascinating. There’s humor and exciting interaction on any number of topics, and in this movie there’s… not so much. There’s a lot of mundane “how are you doing?” and “get in the car” and “don’t forget to come home after school!” After that, when the lead character becomes a high school student, he has long boring emo/introspective speeches which are 100% accurate to being a teenager (and what I make an effort to avoid talking to teenagers) so I had to deal with that. I would encourage people to see Boyhood because it’s a one-of-a-kind in the timeline/filming regard but I wish that characters had been more witty. The other thing I learned from this film: Don’t drink alcohol. That’s bad. That’s a reoccurring problem.

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Would you like some charts? Because I happen to have some right here.

Friday, November 7th, 2014

Several of them involve dinosaurs.

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Kitchen, Part Never-Ending Ouroboros.

Friday, November 7th, 2014

Backsplash! I’ve started working on it. I waffled back and forth on a variety of ideas but now I have finally decided on this.

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In order to decide if I liked it I stared at it for several days to see if I would get sick of it. I did not, so I began the painting process. First, a brown paper bag-colored basecoat. Then I did the first layer of splotches but the sponges weren’t diffuse enough.

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So I got tiny round sponges on tiny sticks and started painting individual dots. It’s a long way off but it’s getting closer.

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After I paint several million more dots I will re-update. SO MANY DOTS.