do you see what i see?

BIG JOB

2011-08-24T22:21:00.000-07:00

Chris Burden at his eerie best.
http://www.ubu.com/film/burden_wrench.html

Conspiracy Theory

2011-08-05T11:13:00.001-07:00

MAGIC BEBE

2011-06-18T00:54:00.001-07:00

, originally uploaded by diamond.teeth.

PEDRO DRAKE DIOR

HI AND LO'S

2011-06-12T12:03:00.000-07:00

It's been a minute. Some very high high's and some unprecedented low's. It's how it goes, right?

An example:
Last night, after getting some terrible news while at work featuring two hospitalizations and a death, I got free baseball tickets before rushing to make a dear friend's opening of his phenomenal solo show. How can all this happen at once?

I am going to go to the Giants' game tonight. And after go see the Slowmotions and Shitty Limits at the knockout. IT IS GOING TO BE GREAT.

You should come to the show. It is not everyday a fantastic Japanese punk band plays in your neighborhood bar for six dollars. Plus, it'll be nice to see you.

The Planet Earth is the Lunatic Asylum of the Galaxy

2011-04-15T16:37:00.000-07:00

I have GOT to see this movie. Teen revelry, euphoric destruction, madness, and maybe even a touch of critique!

LORD LOVE A DUCK

The Future is bleak

2011-04-06T00:22:00.001-07:00

If these are the kind of role models we give kids, the best jokes we can hope for are saying unfunny misogynist things in a repetitive voice. And that is a future I do not want to be a part of. Except, then I found this website by an Adam Sandler: http://www.asandler.com/

I have no idea if this is actually Adam Sandler's official website. It seems entirely too good to be true. Like any good piece of cyberia, there are gifs, broken links, and weekly updates that haven't been touched in years. Not since Gilbert Gottfried's blog (RIP) have I encountered such a failed foray into the internet. He offers such gems as the Guide to safe fax and a list of things to do to piss people off as opposed to his separate list of things to do to annoy people. He even has an X-Files drinking game.

It is just perfect.

Feel Good Party Duck

2011-03-30T13:12:00.001-07:00

I'm obsessed with this picture of Donald Duck. It is from a commercial I saw no less than four times while watching the season premiere of Make It or Break It (review forthcoming). I think it is from a clip of the famous Main Street Electric Parade. Disco Donald seems to have lost that irascible nature in favor a light-up bow tie. An icon of our times.

FYI:
Donald's full name is Donald Fauntleroy Duck. He was born on Friday the 13th. He is colorblind and has Nazi-parody nightmares.

The Pleasures of Hassan: A 1000 year old Top Ten List.

2011-03-16T14:06:00.000-07:00

I have been reading all this Abbasid poetry lately. Woweewoo, did those 10th century Arabs know how to party! Here's an example: Attending a dinner party, Hassan was asked what he liked most about being alive. I couldn't agree more with the list the rattled off.

The Pleasures of Hassan, a 10th century fool, as reported by wandering historian 'Ali ibn Muhammad Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi

-safety
-health
-feeling smooth, shiny and round forms
-scratching myself when I itch
-eating pomegranates in summer
-sleeping with wild women and beardless boys
-walking without trousers among people who have no shame
-seeking a quarrel with sullen people
-finding no resistance on the part of those I love
-associating with idiots
-frequenting faithful fellows like brothers and not seeking the company of vile souls

[This is quoted directly and in its entirety from Robert Irwin’s Night and Horses and the Desert (p173), which cites Abdelwahab Boudiba's Sexuality in Islam (London, 1985; translated from French by Alan Sheridan), p 128 as the source of this quote. This isn't twitter. Here is a context that allows any reader to further their interest in this topic.]

The list moves from general conditions to simple bodily pleasures to a sense of the relational and intimate. Maybe it is an unfounded sense of importance or self-centeredness about the present that makes me marvel at how 1000 years hasn't changed a thing. Pomegranate drips from a chin in sunshine, pestering the pouty and somber to get a rise, a palmed pebble are all as satisfying to me as they were to Hassan. I'm not trying to say there is some human condition that links us. (GAG) Rather, I am just impressed with Hassan's excellent selection of ideas. The variety of pleasures and the perfect icons that represent them are what makes this recipe for happiness so great. It's like he reached out from his tent near Baghdad to give a shaka.

A Living Bell

2011-03-14T10:29:00.000-07:00

<br><br>SP

HOLA! Long time, no see. I've been very busy lately. I started interning at McSweeney's. It's going great. You can keep your eyes peeled for a few things in the May issue of the Believer by yours truly. You'd think getting back into a reading and writing mode would really up the output on here -in both quality and content. And, hopefully, it will. Heretofore, I've just been too busy. Until it does, help yourself to some jamz by Melanie Safka. She was a weirdo babe with a guru.

Look! She even makes that same stupid face that I do when I am happy.

Plus, my grandparents are in town. Now, I get to go slide around on those library ladders at Britex.

Dear Friends,

2011-02-14T15:29:00.000-08:00

Happy Valentines.

get moody

2011-02-14T02:06:00.000-08:00

After a month of warm and bright weather that shamed me for waking up past 11, I am looking forward to hunkering down a little. More movies, more reading. Hell, let it rain.

And way more DIRTY BEACHES

I love how this one looks and sounds like a David Lynch movie. So affective in the same lonesome, yearning, and dark-fuzzy way.

He is playing on Wednesday with Dum Dum Girls. If I wasn't busy opening many bottles of pink champagne for other people's (belated) Valentines, I would really like to be my own valentine, pop my own sparkling and go there.

Rest easy, old friend

2011-02-03T19:46:00.000-08:00

This was my dog, Gwen. She died today. When I was ten, I picked her out of a stripmall pet store based on her spotted blue coat for $99. She was a fantastic, difficult, and loving companion. Her quality of life had reached a point where it longer seemed reasonable to watch her slip and slide across linoleum floors, loose control of her bladder or be unable to find her food bowl. I didn't make the decision, but I understand it.

She is missed.

Get To That

2011-01-28T01:37:00.000-08:00

A recipe for happiness:

Jam this goofy/smooth jam this all day and night.

Hang in a paddleboat with your friend on a sunny day.

Eat roasted butternut squash.

Bay Area - Consent Discussion

2011-01-26T12:30:00.000-08:00

This Saturday at the Berkeley Public Library (South Branch) there will be a community discussion about defining and understanding consent. Please come! We need you there!

Feel free to let others know. Email me with concerns and questions!!

START TODAY

2011-01-24T11:58:00.001-08:00

New York Times home delivery starts today. 2011: Upping the ante.

Excited for:
CROSSWORDS!
Enraged rants triggered Maureen Dowd and Thomas L. Friedman's misguided faux-left op-eds!
The Ethicist! The Science Times on Tuesday!

Ponzo defined

2011-01-21T02:20:00.000-08:00

This is a PONZO ILLUSION. It's the name of my blog and I've never really talked about why I chose that name. Matin Ponzo, an Italian psychologist, came up with the phenomenon when trying to illustrate how an object's size is judged relative to its background. Check it out. These three elephants are all the same size. You can measure them. The converging lines cause them to look different. It is the background that determines our relative perception of an object. It is precisely in that spirit that I began this blog.

Today, when I went to surprise Hannah at work with some tiramisu from Cafe Gratitude, she mentioned that she is rereading Susan Sontag's On Photography. We got really revved up talking about Sontag getting unfairly kicked around the canon since her death, the overemphasis on her relation to Barthes, and other hot topics (the streak!). Hannah mentioned feeling really comforted by the experience of rereading a book that was so vital to our respective intellectual development. I first came to Sontag through a New York Times article about Abu Ghraib, "Regarding the Torture of Others." More that my first introduction to Sontag, it was the first time I had read a deeply philosophic treatment of art and form that was invested in the politics I am committed to. What I mean is, in that article I found a model for a political writing that engaged form. I remember the spring day that I read it at my dad's kitchen table. I brought to high school that following day and talked endlessly about it. I had written a paper a little before then about a popular political poster from the 1960's made by a group called Another Mother for Peace.

At the tender age of 17, I was very frustrated by what I understood to be a weak argument by a group of women who didn't understand the necessity of extremism in the face of violence and war. BAMN. More, I was irritated that a antiwar feminist stance had to be articulated through a concern for children and relied on a sense of the maternal for its pathos -I had just heard about rhetoric. I was offended that the furthest they were willing to go was to suggest war is unhealthy, as if hygiene were more important than clear ethical and moral imperatives not to senselessly murder people. Sontag couldn't have shown up at a better moment. With a fantastically deadpan and methodical argument, her essay calls into question the photographs, the events depicted in them and their reception. And it turns out she hates Dazed and Confused too! Anyway, it was nice to remember a pivotal moment in my development as a thinker. As often happens when recollecting how one's changed, I felt a desire to recommit to the practice I found so inspiring in that article and in the spirit of what I was already doing at 17. I want to think harder about the images and ideas that populate this world. I want to think about them rigorously and with respect to the context and discourse in which they are situated. This is a critical task, but it can also be a fun one and I hope an interesting one.
In thinking about the rise of twitter and tumblr, I've often said that what I hate is the decontextualization. The images on tumblr are stripped of all meaning, context, or way to learn anything about their origin. It is a form that allows as little information as possible so as to be just a slick, floating image. With twitter, ideas are capped before even being able to be formed. It's an echochamber of boring bullshit. That ipad bus ad really nails it.

A bunch of garbage where people can report their minutia without saying a single interesting thing about it. If I am going to participate in the internet at all (pre-wingnut freakout future), I want to at least think about my contributions and what sort of exchanges it engenders. Of course, I still want to creep on my crush's flickr. Of course, I look at something on wikipedia everyday. But, that doesn't mean I have to act like a the precursor to a common weather phenomenon like a rainbow is an event whose specialness needs to be echoed forever. I don't think every sandwich deserves an archive. Say something interesting about that very same thing and I'm fine with it. Generate an idea, offer it to the world in the form of a very small readership and call it a day. But, the idea part is key. Seriously though, I can't believe they put the thing in about the sandwich. It's like I don't even have to make a parody it's so stupid already.

2011: BIG IDEAS, BETTER WRITING
TWO THOUSAND NEXT LEVELIN'

Not to worry, though, for all this highfaluting talk about theoretical commitments, this blog will still have as many dog photos as ever. Especially since next weekend is the SAN FRANCISCO DOG SHOW.

Nicities

2011-01-13T17:21:00.000-08:00

Oh, San Francisco!
Went on a cool vacation to visit buddies across our great nation. It was so great to party with the punks. In Chattanooga, right before New Years, I was so struck by how genuinely nice everyone was. Like, huge smiles and crushing, full-torso hugs are the norm. This warmth was in Athens and -to a lesser extent- Gainesville too. I'm only qualifying the friendliness of Gainesville because I spent most of my time with two fantastic friends who are really grumpy dudes, Daniel and Ryan. (WASSUP GRUMPS? When is Weak Dollar gonna happen?) and this lady was really mean to me at a party for no reason. But, across my trip from Amy and Eric Nelson's hugs in the Pickle Barrel to Sunshine SS giving me a ride to Florida which made their cramped ride certainly less comfortable, I found myself being nicer in response to this punk geniality and goodwill. Is it stupid in 2011 to want to recommit to niceness? Given the shitty state of things, my own justified rage at the political climate, further infringements on basic living, does being nicer make sense? I THINK IT DOES. In an urban environment, alienation abounds. Why make being a man in the crowd worse? At home in SF, I find myself walking around scowling when I actually feel totally fine. I don't acknowledge other humans on the street, even though I am constantly putting myself in peril staring at babes while biking or crossing the street. I had a great day yesterday. Ate a bahn-mi in the dogpark with Hannah. Wore a tanktop in January. A dude wearing a Minor Threat tee working in a pizza place gave me 'wazzup' eyebrow wiggles. A gray-eyed puppy frantically kissed me on the inside of my mouth. Painted my nails a Carribean-sea turquois. I walked around smiling all day. I tried to be just a little friendlier to the people I spoke to, a little more polite. I left no dangling 'thank you's left unsaid. It feels better, enforces that PMA.

Ironically, being nicer is probably the change I make in 2011 that will effect me the most. I'm trying to take a roll of photos a week and write 500 words a day. You're looking at the outcomes of both right now. I'm trying to have more consistency about normal things like drinking enough water and reading as much as I'd like to. I rearranged my room today to have two separate workspaces. One for art. One for writing. PRODUCTIVITY THRU ARCHITECTURE. I'm the Le Corbosier of my bedroom.

Here's to a new urban friendliness! I don't wanna feel cattiness as I walk down Valencia. WE'RE MORE THAN PIGEONS. There are plenty of flannels for all of us in Thrift Town! Let's make comments in line at Four Barrel. I'll tell you I like your shoes and you mention the weather and we'll all be a pinch happier.

It's like that Times New Viking song "Teenage Lust." A corrective to the MC5 song by the same name, the chorus of the TNV version layers itself with "I don't wanna die in the city alone." And, if craigslist missed connections are any indication, I think that is a widely held sentiment.

(apologies for this horrendously ugly player)

And I wouldn't want it any other way

2010-12-22T13:22:00.000-08:00

FWENDZ

2010-12-13T10:44:00.000-08:00

I love the Muppets. A lot. This is one of my favorite scenes in the Muppet Movie. WAY TO RESIST, KERMIT! Who needs money when you don't have friends? Who wants to be a mascot when you can live your life? Why get sponsored when you can live (fancy)free?

SLIMER

2010-12-12T10:49:00.000-08:00

What is going on in my local 99cent store? I'm just trying to buy some cassette tapes!

getting into the xmas groove

2010-12-04T13:57:00.000-08:00

Paul and I went to a very cool Christmas train in Niles, California. It really put me in the holiday spirit. I am working on a mixtape -as I type even- for holiday exchange. Do you wanna exchange tapes? I do!

Contemplate the Road That Brought You Underground

2010-12-01T12:13:00.000-08:00

I just can't get enough weirdo lady folk singers lately. Today, it has been all about Norma Tanega.

What a great performance! She's all smiles and urban self-reflection.
Norma Tanega was born right over in Vallejo. She went to Scripps for her undergrad and MFA in painting before moving to New York in '64. She is the only Filipina I can think of that was performing in the New York folk scene. Plus, she dated Dusty Springfield for years.

She was a one hit wonder in 1966 with "Walkin' My Cat Named Dog."

(You can buy this 45 for $5 on ebay right now. HINT. HINT.)

When asked about the song, Tanega explains: "I had always wanted a dog, but because of my living situation I could only have a cat; I named my cat dog and wrote a song about my dilemma." If there is one thing I understand, it is that problem. There is probably no one thing in my life that feels like a problem which I could so easily remedy. I really like that the thing I complain about the most became a top single by a lady who made out with the peroxide Queen of the Mods.

Commiserate with this crucial babe:

COMO VES?

2010-11-24T13:49:00.000-08:00

MUY IMPORTANTE!
Just saw the best punk movie I have ever seen. Como Ves? (What Do You Think?) was made in Mexico City in 1985. It is less of a narrative and more a bunch of vignettes that center around the thriving punk scene in the barrio interspersed with performances by a few bands.

Paul Leduc directed Como Ves? and also the 1986 Frida. While Como Ves? is worth watching for the time capsule of punk that it is, it also is really beautiful.

This is what the show space was like.

This is what the circle pits looked like:

Some local punks:

DESTROY FUCKING NAZIS

My favorite punk, with a GIANT scar

There are some really sexy parts, some pretty violent parts, but the one of the most outstanding scenes centers around the punks going to a drag show. The Queen performing blew my mind.

Towards the end of the movie, punks steal a cop car and hijack a plane to party on. There is a riot outside where everyone is dancing with babies, sitting on each other's shoulders, playing music and chanting "FUCKERS!"

Here is CECILA TOUSSAINT playing during the hijacking.

Cecila Toussaint is a huge babe. She and my favorite punk have a great love scene where she tries to bite his ankle.

Here is another clip of her singing in the movie. Check those high notes! and her cool teeth!

Facets put this movie out earlier this year. The quality of the movie and also the subtitles are horrible (a common problem with Facets' releases Hannah pointed out). But, nonetheless, Como Ves? offers a variety of compelling scenes and a peak into a less represented moment of punk culture. It has all the antiauthoritarian strike and strife of Over the Edge (and even the same half shirts Matt Dillon sports) but in a context that is not about suburban blandness and all male revolt. The barrio setting and the presence of hard labor informs the movie without making it overly didactic. Labor is not the focus of the movie and it is not absent either as is the case in many Hollywood movies. Women are agents in the petty crimes, the hijacking, and the music. Queerness isn't written out of the rebellion or the experience of coming of age.
Explicitly critical of classism, Como Ves? isn't about how hard it is to be poor. It's not the kind of movie about poverty where one member of an oppressed group achieves some uplift out of misery. The movie offers that classic slice-of-life of the neighborhood. It's like the trope of the apartment building's fourth wall falling and the guy in the showercap is revealed in the tub and everyone is caught in media res. There is an implicit argument through the composition of the vignettes about the fullness of life, the pettiness of circumstance, and the necessary escape of self-made fun. All that punk shit.

I'm still trying to work out my interpretation of the climactic scene where the the hijackers are put on TV and they just don't know what to say. The movie is called "Como Ves?" which is literally translated "as you see." It is used colloquially in a question to mean "what do you think?" There comes a moment when these kids who demanded to be heard are thrust in front of the cameras and have nothing to say, no demands to the mass public. Then, after a panicked moment, they are taken over by the authorities. That is the best way to end a punk movie I can imagine -it is the tragic punk(and youth angst) parable. The movie is bookended by the longish single-shot scenes of two drunks hanging out in disused stacks of cement tubing that get a little too Waiting for Godot for me. But, that is probably the only thing that I would call a major flaw -where the movie tries something and fails. All the other imperfections seems to keep within the tone and even add to it. I just love it. If you don't have access to a video store as good as Lost Weekend or Plan 9 to rent the movie, you can still watch it and for free! It is available on youtube in 5 parts.

GET GOND

2010-11-17T12:24:00.000-08:00

I could look at this all day.

The Gond are from central India. Traditionally, they paint these ropey, bright figures on the walls. Now, these fantastic creatures are ending up on paper for sale in the West. They feature all the same animals I like: peacocks, snakes, dogs, tiny birds, anything with horns and antlers. The way branching and fanning works with the geometric patterns is so impressive to me. And the color is just spectacular. I would like to just lay here in bed and think about snakes forming branches for birds and antlers burst with leaves, if someone would just come over to flip the "Rumors in Disguise" LP that I can't stop listening to.

Shellshag "Resilient Bastard"

VISION QUEST/the best song of all

2010-11-15T12:30:00.000-08:00

Little Wheel Spin & Spin

The Crazy Horse West | Myspace Video

I know I have been posting a lot of videos lately- which I know I skip on other people's blogs. But, if you watch one video all long internetting day, watch this one of Buffy Sainte Marie singing "Little Wheel Spin and Spin" on that show RAINBOW QUEST (see below). I first heard this song when Dan Higgs covered it in a living room in Berkeley. It is so fantastically haunting in tone and in lyric.

Buffy Sainte Marie is just the best. She is a Canadian Cree who has spent most of her later years in Hawaii. She likes surfing and was married to Jack Nietzsche, who wrote fucking "Needles and Pins." Her son is named "Dakota Starblanket Wolfchild." She breastfed him on Sesame Street, see? Sainte Marie appeared frequently on Sesame Street after being "blacklisted" by Lyndon Johnson for her participation and support of Native uprising in the US. You can read all about it on her website www.creativenative.com.

Here are some clips from her appearance on Sesame Street. It is hard to imagine some of the stuff was on TV. Or, to put it more precisely, it is striking how little there is of quiet and communicative television for children or anyone.

Here she introduces the MOUTHBOW, which is so impressive that she can sing and play at the same time.

This is a scary song about the moon that also features on of my favorite editing overlay techniques.

The chant at the beginning of this is so cool. I also like the aesthetics of the street itself.

Sainte Marie has been making digital art from the early 80's on. Most of her work is this hyper-color digital psychedelic manipulation of photos. I get that it's overdone and really cheesy but I like it so much.

"Elder Brothers"

"Wesakechak"

This is Wesakechak, the Cree mythological trickster.

Sainte Marie is still making music. She won a Juno in 2009 for her latest record "Running for the Drum."

"My head is full of me"

2010-11-13T12:51:00.000-08:00

"No Hole in My Head," Malvina Reynolds featuring Ramblin Jack Elliot and Pete Seeger.

Malvina Reynolds was a radical San Francisco native who made music until the day she died. Fantastically smart and willfully dedicated, she earned a doctorate in Romance Philology from UCBerkeley in 1939. She spent her life writing songs that gracefully blast the social order she opposed. Working in metaphor and synecdoche, songs like "Little Boxes" and the "New Restaurant" expose the ever encroaching shittiness of modern life. "Little Boxes," first made famous by Pete Seeger, is about the suburban sprawl and vapid, unsustainable architecture of the Daly City. It is now enjoying a resurgence since a Regina Spector's cover was used for the opening of Weeds.

"The New Restaurant"

All these videos are all from Pete Seeger's show called "RAINBOW QUEST." Shot all in black and white from 1965-66, Seeger had a bunch of folk legends sit around in the sound studio and play some tunes. I don't really like Pete Seeger very much, but I really love "Rainbow Quest."

Here is he is covering one of Malvina's songs about San Francisco called "Seventy Miles." It's a protest song about the mistreatment of the bay.

What up driven lady radicals from the bay?!

Also, Susan Wengraf made a short documentary about Malvina in 1973. Has anyone seen it? Does anyone have it?

STANLEY POOCHINSKI: THE BEST NAME FOR A DOG

2010-11-12T15:20:00.000-08:00

I cannot, simply cannot believe that I didn't know about this until two days ago. Featuring the likes of Peter Boyle and also the nice guy with the Wrangler at the end of Adventures in Babysitting, POOCHINSKI is maybe the best buddy-cop comedy concept. Like a ghostly Turner and Hootch or Oh Heavenly Dog with a raunchier, poorly made puppet Benji, watching Poochinski one can only wonder how anything like this ever got made -let alone how it is its own genre. Also where did they find such perfect villains? I hope in the late 80's at the hight of TV crime dramas that there was a whole bunch of actors that only played sunglasses wearing villains who robbed in the daylight.

The only episode ever made is below (in three parts).
Note: the overly cinematic shots, the horrifying puppet, and weird romance with a widow subplot.

STANLEY POOCHINSKI: TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE.

Thanks to Hannah for showing me this, the best thing.

can this camera

2010-11-10T14:43:00.000-08:00

I was just trying to figure out how many flannels to put on before I go to see Let Me In for the second time (review forthcoming) and this is what I get bombarded with. I genuinely forget that these videos exist. And while I have a lot to say about the idea that the internet becoming a stockpile for a small but weird variety of media like this, I am mostly overwhelmed with shock when the internet suggests it to me.

It's like how last night at the bar, this lady with nice glasses sent a dude with an old timey hat to ask me if I "hated" her because she thought I was giving her death stares. I wasn't. In fact, I was only looking at her because I liked her glasses! I had been told earlier in that same evening what an "honest face" I have -which I took as a particularly nice complement for what could be construed as an inability to prevent any insignificant passing thought from distorting my face. When the gentleman in the coal miner costume asked me if I had been giving her the stinkeye, I was shocked and could only reply "REALLY?" a lot of times before figuring out that it actually was hurting my feelings. "I try to be so nice!" and "I like her glasses! That's all!" was all I got out before the guy offered that he thought she was a crazy person. He explained that his buddy was trying to hit on her and she wouldn't shut up about how I was looking at her so he was just trying to "put a cork in her ass" about it. While I like that phrase, I was still a little bent out of shape about the idea that I could unintentionally make someone feel bad like that. I feel like I try to put out good things into the world and more precisely to be friendly, but somehow the world gives me back felt hats putting corks in asses and bear attack videos when I am only trying to check the weather. I went over to smooth things over with girl who was still hanging out with those dudes who were international clothing importers or something. She acted like she didn't know what I was talking about. It got weird only to get weirder when the boss of the two guys asked my name. I told him and offered my hand for him to shake and he tried to fucking lick my hand. I pulled back my hand and said "no fucking way" and walked off. No one seemed to laugh or even take note.

To bring this all full circle back to internet videos, I am one drink at the Hemlock away from becoming the Winnebago Man.

Watch this documentary. It's a fair treatment of a brilliant and true wingnut that a bunch of dumbdumbs like but don't really appreciate. Jack Rebney is a fantastic figure who isn't all that angry. His friendship with Keith is so great as is his love for his dog, Buddha. There is a really touching scene where Keith brings Jack the single biggest windchime I have ever seen. It's also interesting that one of the things that drove Jack to his hermit status is the faltering of television news media, particularly the lack of candor and dignity available in that form. Plus, you get to see his cool wingnut lifestyle near Mt Shasta.

TAKE THIS TRIP

2010-11-06T13:25:00.000-07:00

New tattoo? I think so. This is a photo of an acid blotter in an original rowboat wrapper. It's on display in a show of Mark McCloud's LSD collection at Ever Gold Gallery I would like to row a boat to today. I would like take a trip today in a rowboat.

ACK

2010-11-06T13:04:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, I called myself a postmodern Cathy. I just need larger speech bubbles to be able to fit "Split Subjecthooooods!" Rather than a chocolate obsession, it's rambling about locovore food angst. Insecurities dramatized on the internet rather than the dressing room. My alienation might be different, but the sweat beads are just the same.

NO SWEAT

2010-11-02T12:03:00.000-07:00

Giants won the World Series. Hannah and I got crushed in a stampede away from riot cops. It was worth it.

This version edits out the first part where Brian Wilson is told he is in violation of the "California Catch a Wave Statute." Watch it on this unembeddable link: SURF SQUAD

STAY TRU

2010-10-22T10:26:00.000-07:00

PIERCED ARROWS TONIGHT!

This song is so good. In surfin' da u-tube for Pierced Arrows videos, a word of advice: if you've liked Pierced Arrows since it was Dead Moon or you get what makes them magical at all, then don't watch the Scion/Vice video for this song. I know the video above kind of sucks too, but it is nothing like a visual representation of punk by people who also put cars that look like toasters and this kind of garbage into the world:

The video looks and sounds all wrong. Clean guitars and visual aesthetics that indicate they thought Pierced Arrows was a goth band. It's disappointing to see a band that is so meaningful be so misconstrued and to know they had a hand in it. I'm not even talking about a selling out (although, I think there is probably plenty to say about that -it's just boring and sad to write about). I mean more that seeing something that used to feel so fantastically weird and specific get gutted and polished to fit a totally weird perception. It's also strange to consider that the exec's over at some pretty big places seem to think teens want to idolize Fred and Toodie and even more deranged that those same teens could possibly do that and want to buy a Scion too. I like the idea of teens seeing the way that Fred and Toodie live as a valid, admirable and obtainable model. But DIY and punk isn't supposed to be about hero worship and copying

Let us not forget our great obligation to ourselves.

Here's the link to the Scion video if you really want to see it: crapola

enwrapped

2010-10-21T09:29:00.000-07:00

It's getting cold now. It's time to drink tea and get under some blankets and listen to these kind of jams.

Find more artists like Broken Water at MySpace Music

These are meant to be interpreted as a Christmas textile wish list. ALSO, Broken Water is playing two BAY AREA shows in a week. Let's slow head bang.

MAUI WOWIE

2010-10-14T22:53:00.001-07:00

Got my nails done did.
VAY-CAY

A Great Costume

2010-10-07T10:58:00.001-07:00

the future me, originally uploaded by tree branch.

I had been planning to be CATHY (from the comics) for Halloween. But this looks SO COOL.
I'd really like it if other people went as comic strip characters. But, not Doonesbury. I hate Doonesbury Anyone from the Peanuts gang or Haggard the Horrible would be welcome.

CALLING ALL HOT FREAKS

2010-10-01T13:17:00.000-07:00

Very excited to see Guided By Voices this Tuesday. Plus, they are playing with their fellow Buckeyes Times New Viking! One time when I lived in England and had no friends to hangout with, I told the drummer/singer of Times New Viking that he looks like a perfect mix of Charles Manson and young Henry Rollins. He totally agreed!! Turns out, he is something of a Chuckles Manson enthusiast also. I also saw them play in a basement with Psychedelic Horseshit who were on acid (for real) and their drummer lost his some of his equipment and used a cardboard box for a bass drum complete with kick pedal (for real). It was one of the best things I have ever seen.

Come to the Warfield. We can eat at the vegan version of panada express in the mall across the street before.

CHICAGO GETS A LIFE

2010-08-24T10:22:00.000-07:00

Well, that's not true. But, there is a cool thing going on in Chicago tonight.

From 6 to 9 this evening, you can peruse the first ten books Tano has put out through LA ANONIMA. Also, there is supposed to be a slide show at 7:30. Loyal readers might remember the previous post about the blurbs I wrote for the first few. I wrote some more for the latest books and they will all be bound together in zine form, available at the show.

Eat a great falafel at Sultan's and check out some really thoughtful books. They are never straightforward texts. They are pilfered reprints of architectural thought, studies of of carpet fragments, distorted images of an imploding building. Each presents a visual history, never assuming a neutral tone of the critical observer or allowing the possibility of an uncharged take on the aesthetic.

K00L KATZ AND CHILL DAWGS

2010-08-06T07:06:00.001-07:00

Spending a lot of time in the place you grew up can make you feel like you've done everything a place has to offer. Eaten every sandwich, taken every walk. But, during this current visit to Bloomington, I'm trying to do some things I haven't done before as well as the things I already know I enjoy. I'm swimming, hanging with buds, staying up late and sometimes going to be early and now PARTYING WITH BIG KATS.

I highly suggest that you make a visit to the Exotic Feline Rescue Center. About an hour west of Bloomington, in scenic Center Point, Indiana, there are 211 big cats hanging out behind some chain link. I cannot believe how these massive beast hang out. I've been around tigers before, but this was a totally different experience. The rescued tigers are unbelievably friendly. It took considerable conscious effort to not touch them as they rubbed against the fence a foot from me making this greeting sound called chuffing. It's like tiger purring mixed with huffing. I can't believe I had never been there before. Even in the 95 degree heat the cats were active -playing in the water, sounding off, leaping, eating.

Melissa and I got the full tour. They offer overnight stays too! We drove back on back roads, passing through Gosport and Stineville, two tiny Hoosier towns I had never been to before. We went a real deal mercantile complete with vintage soda bottle collection, While we were there we checked out some awesome buildings people have been revamping in these crumbling bergs.

Then we went to the NAUGHTY DAWG -the new hot dog restaurant in Bloomington. There is a whole restaurant of only hot dogs now. It's in the Big Lot's parking lot, near the Dollar General between the Check'N'Go and a tattoo shop (WHAT'S UP INDIANA ONE-STOP SHOP?).

It's cool though because I got VEGAN CHILI DAWGS and Melissa had her first VEGAN CHICAGO STYLE DOG. I like their giardiniera but will skip the neon green relish. Also the guy that works there really loves the Silver Jews, which is cool because I do too.

TWO THUMBS AND PAWS UP.

NO BRAINER

2010-07-16T06:41:00.000-07:00

I mean really. This show is going to be so goooood.
WITCHES
UNIVERSE
FAT SHADOW (mems of Pink Razors and DoorKeys -listen to that song LSD- SRSLY)

Also, I had a really great time making this flier. Let me know if anyone would like me to make one for them.

I PRESENT TO YOU A SUMMER JAM

2010-07-14T08:08:00.000-07:00

As you may or may not know, I am nine days into a MONTH AND A HALF long VACATION. I'm getting ready to go swim in my favorite lake, eating a peach and drinking iced coffee. I strongly suggest you try to do the same.

My jam of last summer, in a fresh funky version for 2010

Beach Fossils' "sometimes." I missed them three days in a row this week -once in Bloomington and twice in Chicago because I went to a family reunion.

Isn't it weird to consider that literally a fossil isn't a fossil until it is dug up? It comes from the Latin "fossus" which means "having been dug up." Before that it is just some chunks of calcium in a rock .Well, I dig this rock, so it's a literal fossil.

Nu Vu

2010-06-04T18:02:00.001-07:00

The view from my new window in my temporary home.

clickittomakeitbig

THE BEST PLACE ON EARTH

2010-05-06T03:47:00.001-07:00

IMG_0657, originally uploaded by disneyfarm.

I went to Disneyland the day before and let me just say DAPHNEYLAND
Basset Hound rescue is the best place on earth.

60 bassets in a hot desert. What could be better?

2010-04-29T23:45:00.001-07:00

LA ANONIMA

2010-04-15T17:35:00.000-07:00

So my friend Tano has started a publishing house called LA ANONIMA. It's put out some really incredible books. I've been writing blurbs and descriptions for some of the titles. Here are a few:

ENDLESS SUM by Cayetano Ferrer

Endless Sum is a book about land and sun. Recounting a year’s worth of travels and art, Cayetano Ferrer presents a series of ideas, tales, and images in a constellation of themes featuring desert architecture, sun worshipping, atomic power, the coincidence of symbols and names, the boundlessness of the space, the predictable rupture of glaciers and casinos alike. Endless Sum is about walking with enough attention to discover resonances between unalike things. Scale is left out in favor of meaning. Glaciers become suns, invisible babies crowd-surf and like the reflection of sky on ocean, the land we occupy is the light we chase.

CASTAWAYS CAST AWAY published Anonymously

This book has only one word in it: castaways, whole and shattered. It appears on top of the falling building that is this book’s protagonist. Each turn of the page progresses into a suspended moment of the Castaways’ destruction. Backed by a dusty setting sun, chainlink fence, palmtrees, and their craned-neck metal cousins, the casino recedes to rubble, projectiles and pluming smoke. By stretching time Castaways becomes a synchedote for Las Vegas and its cultures. This dilation allows for a closer look emphasizing the spectacular, the garish and even the unintentionally beautiful in monumental demolition and waste.

EXPLOSION/IMPLOSION by Cayetano Ferrer

Explosion/Implosion is a set of compelling images detailing a forgotten history of the twin birth of the Las Vegas strip and atomic power. Girls in mushroom cloud bathing suits welcome readers to a desert oasis of irradiated pools, Stardust and Sands. Moving from postcards sent from this once-frontier to frames of their mirrored demise, Explosion/Implosion chronicles what for fifty years made the Nevada desert so bright.

A FIELD GUIDE TO CASINO CARPETS by David G. Schwartz

A Field Guide to Casino Carpets is fantasy text forged from real sources. It is an invitation to inhabit an architecture in a new way, a mode of engaging what is built to be background noise. It functions as a key for interpreting the minor details as the tell of a chaotic consumer culture and its bombastic aesthetics. A text on the moral necessity of ornament and how to make a useful pattern, William Morris’ “Some Hints on Pattern Making,” introduces dozens of Dr. David G. Schwartz's photos of carpets in Las Vegas casinos. Juxtaposing these fragments of living and dead casino décor with Morris’s 1884 text forces the us to consider the use and fact of “barbarous waste” evident in even the floors.

You should buy them all, or at least peruse the flash previews available on the website. These are intricate and dense works which function more to unravel than to explain.

BOO-FOON

2010-04-07T13:40:00.005-07:00

Did you know I went to New York?

I did. And I didn't take any pictures because I am real dingaling.

I went to Amber and Jeremy's new house in Warwick. SO RAD. It was gross outside for a lot of the trip. Hot toddies and delivery. But, I went with Jesse Jane to get my nails done for the first time since Angi and I got acrylic nails with illegal credit at a Walmart when I was 16. I remember specifically ripping them off in the shower the day before we left for Michigan Fest (no nails in the pit).

I am obsessed with this ghost. It is making the most anxious, displeased face. I love ghosts.

Ghost Dog

Here's a photo I took when I was on a twelve hour layover in Philly on my way to Bangkok.

TattleTale Association R. Giordano, 2009.

I have no idea how there could be a woman and a baby waving at me between the the funny sign on the glass I was trying to take a photo of. Her head is completely out of proportion. I didn't notice they were even in the picture until my friend Lizzie who also takes photos of funny signs pointed it out to me. I was completely alone in a subway exit tunnel when I took the photo. I can't say for certain it was a haunting, but all signs point to ghoul.

SLIPPED MY MIND

2010-04-06T02:21:00.002-07:00

that I could use my brain.

I love that dweeb in the brown shirt.

Pink Houses

2010-03-08T00:19:00.001-08:00

This is my all-time favorite picture of me.
If you couldn't tell, I'm the baby being held by my dad in the middle of the swimming hole at Odie's (the man in the foreground). Clearly, everyone is having the best time.

This picture captures an affect of my childhood that I am intensely nostalgic for. The desire is not for a sense of youth or specific memory but for a moment and the zietgiest of an era I can barely recall. The mid-to-late 1980's in Indiana were a magic time. There was this great excitement and sense of place in Bloomington at the time -basketball championships, FARMAID, and desire to consider the local and the home-grown that I can only see as a counter to the slick, impersonal aura of Reganomics. My dad was part of a group of people who referred to themselves as "hillbilly hippies." It was a rowdy mix of bikers, farmers, library science students, and nudists who drove beat up old trucks, did coke to grateful dead bootlegs and gave a shit. It is a mutant counterculture that I find myself obsessing over. It was a lifestyle that seems so obviously appealing - the centrality of friendship, drinking late and building fires, an awareness and constant mention of 'freedom,' wingnuts with knowhow and toolboxes in their truck, dogs never on the leash, the fucking wilderness, appreciating your youth and feeling great, psychedelics, open roads to hot springs.
Shit, throw in a black flag tape and that's probably my dream summer.

TAKE ME BACK. I'M TRYING TO TAKE IT THERE.

THE SAFETY ZONE WILL BE ELIMINATED

2010-02-26T00:13:00.003-08:00

Do yourself a favor and watch Wim Wender's Paris, Texas. You can watch the best era of Harry Dean on netflix instantly.

Also, I just made a killer mixtape. Let me know, Dear Readers, if you want to trade.

OPEN SESAME

2010-01-30T12:28:00.003-08:00

I was buying a used BIG LOVE boxset off amazon yesterday. As I was checking out with my "cart" the website offered me some doohicky so that I can "one-click" purchase with a password. The folks at amazon keep track of the things I look at and buy and were nice enough to offer some suggestions:

My Genuine Animus??? Is that what they think -based on my browsing- would be a convenient phrase for me to remember?

Luckily, they gave me some other options too:

I'm glad they recognized that the only way I will only have a "great corpus" or a "large principle sum" is in words.

NETWORK

2010-01-27T11:16:00.002-08:00

This is a picture of my dad meeting Rev. Jesse Jackson. Reportedly, they talked about how the banks are evil.

TWENTY AND THEN???

2010-01-12T00:13:00.003-08:00

A BRAND NEW YEAR IS UPON US.

I have made some resolutions that I haven't broken or achieved yet. I drank some champagne. I counted backwards from ten. I came up with some annual puns. I'd like to suggest 20zen because 2009 was a horrible doozy for so many. But, by the same token, maybe we should make it 20gin.
I've tried to use my cheap verbal prowess to solve the now years-old riddle of what to call this past decade. 'The Oh-Oh's is not even worth making a joke out of because it will only be outdone this next year in the New York Post's headlines. I guess 'The Zeros' is an option but not exactly accurate. And I'm not British so saying 'The Naughts' makes me feel like I am trying too hard.
And then in looking up other's suggestions I realized something even more devastating:

HOW WILL WE MAKE SUNGLASSES OUT OF THE YEAR WITHOUT TWO ZEROS??
We have reached the end of an era.

KRIB NOTES

2009-12-16T21:00:00.001-08:00

I've got the holiday spirit. I'm stealing dance moves to debut on New Years Eve. Pay close attention to the shaker in the orange shirt.

New Energy Future

2009-12-12T12:47:00.007-08:00

I was listening to the nonstop rain this morning and reading about the climate talks in Copenhagen in the Times when I found the most perfect combination of online journalism and internet advertising.

You have to click it to see it large enough to get the joke.

OHHH! that's what's Shell, the world's largest corporation, is doing to tackle the phenomenally horrifying euphemism of the ensuing state of geo-politics: "new energy future."

What I first chuckled at was the irony of Shell advertising on this particular page -paying to be associated with an article about resistance to them. Then I was laughing at the "tackle" joke. Then I wasn't really laughing anymore because I was awe-struck, fully jaw-dropped by the phrase "new energy future."

The "new energy future" is meant to bring to mind the promise of green energy, the hope in plant-based zero-emissions technologies. There is no requirement of actual reduction of consumption in any real sense. Living in San Francisco, I can take a short walk to Mission Bay and see the future that this promises. An overly orchestrated zone of the city with horrible Ikea architecture made of recycled materials that visually emphasize that they were recycled, rather than minimize the energy and resources required to manufacture them. You can live in a refabed loft and trade in your old car to drive a new Prius to buy free-range meat at the Whole Foods with a clean conscious. I don't mean to make my complaint sound like it is about lifestyle choices. I am talking about the denaturing and glamorization of what used to be called environmentalism and self-satisfaction offered by these kinds of faux-conservation efforts. The concept of consumption is only furthered. Don't fix the old muni stops, build totally new ones. Don't consider living without a car, buy a totally new one regardless of how massive the amount of energy and resources that production requires. Somehow, in this new future, the problems of class and access get erased. How can this green consumption future be for everyone? Don't make -only buy. The modes of production are just as obscured as ever. The earth is still ours for the pillaging. It's a future where the earth is just as dead but our consumption looks green.

For along time, I thought it was just spin, an advertising campaign effort. For instance, clean coal isn't a thing. There is no way to make the mining or burning of coal "clean." But by calling it that we all feel better about our over use. You can read a lot more about that on the very media savvy Reality Coalition website (good pun). I remember noticing this "greenwashing" for the first time when BP changed from 'British Petroleum' to 'Beyond Petroleum.' It's not that they were going to have anything other than gas at the gas stations. It's that their gas stations in my area were being revamped with a more contemporary ergonomic design. The problem with the new energy future for all its "this is not a plastic bag" totes is that it is really the old energy past. And the problem with announcing the status quo as a new-found freedom is that people will believe it.

The man is this photo is Ken Saro-Wiwa, a Nigerian writer and activist. In 1995, he was murdered at Royal Dutch Shell's behest, hanged along with eight others on trumped-up charges. Saro-Wiwa became the leader of the grassroots organization Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) which sought to give the ethnic minority Ogonis increased independence, including political clout in the face of Shell's crushing force. Shell had been terrorizing the Ogoni people and their land since the mid-1950's. As the Ogoni began to resist the destruction of their mangroves to build pipelines, the pollution of the air from gas flaring, the toxic dumping, the theft of their farms and the revamping of viable land into oil fields, Shell as many other multinational corporations do, made the most of an unfortunate political situation and enlisted the help of a military government.

Here is a short introductory video made after Saro-Wiwa's death.

Last June, Shell paid 15.5 million dollars to settle a lawsuit originally brought in 1996 by the families of Saro-Wiwa and the other eight people executed as a result of the falsified charges as well as other victims of Shell-related autrocities. Interestingly, the trial happened at a federal court in New York. Under the 1798 Alien Tort Act, a non-citizen can bring suit for extra-judicial killing and human rights abuses no matter where they occur.

According to the Guardian article announcing the settlement , the court documents included "a letter from Shell in which it agreed to pay a unit of the Nigerian army for services rendered. The unit had retrieved one of the company's fire trucks from the village of Korokoro – an action that according to reports at the time left one Ogoni man dead and two wounded. Shell wrote it was making the payment 'as a show of gratitude and motivation for a sustained favourable disposition in future assignments'."

Shell continues to operate in Nigeria. It continues to dump waste and use gas flares in the Niger Delta.
Shell's revenue last year was 458.361 billion USD and is the world's largest corporation. It operates in 140 countries. Ken Saro-Wiwa's death like the complete destruction of his community is not an isolated incident.

This is how you "tackle the new energy future."

Here are links to more information on Ken Saro-Wiwa
http://wiwavshell.org/
the website of the plaintiffs in the case

http://remembersarowiwa.com

http://www.mosop.org/

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1913
letter from Chinua Achebe, Susan Sontag and more for the PEN society on behalf of Saro-Wiwa after his arrest.

http://royaldutchshellplc.com/
wingnuty Shell watchdog website

I hope there is some thought of Ken Saro-Wiwa at the talks in Copenhagen. In writing about this, I am struck by the aspects that hit me as "realities." There are realities to consumption. The horrific realities in the fact of the post-colonial corporate empires. Ones where we have to confront the chain of events and more complexly, the passivity and complacency that allow these kinds of things to happen. There are realities to recognized also in that video in where people achieve a sense of agency through organizing, speaking out and declaring themselves worthy of rights. Environmentalism is to think about the earth dynamically. It is so much more than "go green." Somehow the popularization of green consumption overshadows the real issue at hand: misery and destruction- of people, of land -for the gluttony of just a few.

"The writer cannot be a mere storyteller, he cannot be a mere teacher; he cannot merely X-ray society’s weaknesses, its ills, its perils, he or she must be actively involved shaping its present and its future.”
-Ken Saro-Wiwa, 1993.

LAST PUPPER

2009-12-08T10:45:00.001-08:00

Probably the best piece of art I have ever made. Courtesy of KATER.

BEST BUDZ

2009-12-06T23:22:00.005-08:00

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

From the January 2009 Telegraph article...
An owl and a Bassett Hound have struck up an unusual friendship.
The pair have become inseparable since meeting at an animal refuge, and are quite happy to cuddle up together on an armchair.
Beryl the Basset Hound, who is a grand old dame at 16 years old, and four-year-old tawny owl Wol struck up a friendship when their owner realised they both loved watching television in the evenings.
Sara Ross, who shares her home in Tenterden, Kent, with the animals said: "They are both rescue animals and they're like best buddies. Wol needs full-time care and one day I was giving him a bit of exercise and he just plonked down on Beryl's back. She doesn't mind, she's really laid back and a bit of a pussycat really. "She didn't mind at all and now you can't keep them apart.
"Four times-a-week you'll see them settle down to watch what's going on in Albert Square. Beryl barks when it's over and Wol gets a bit upset too, with a bit of flapping.
She added: "They are inseparable. They love cuddling up and watching television together.
"It won't come as a surprise that they love nature documentaries, but they also like soaps like Coronation Street and Emmerdale."
She added: "I've never known two animals who are so different hit it off quite so well. They just love being around each other."

I would just like to add that I too love cuddling on an armchair and watching TV in the evenings so I could probably also be best friends with them.

"Alive and Well and Living in Someone Else's Face"

2009-12-06T00:27:00.005-08:00

Everyone's time comes eventually. Even a man of 3,000 faces.

This is the number one best obituary of all time.

Jan Leighton, Actor Who Played Everyone, Dies at 87

By BRUCE WEBER
Published: November 27, 2009
Correction Appended

Jan Leighton, an actor who conjured a career by dressing up as historical figures, appearing in so many commercials, print advertisements and industrial films as George Washington, William Shakespeare and Christopher Columbus that he was both ubiquitous and anonymous, died on Nov. 16 in Manhattan. He was 87.The cause was complications after a stroke, said his daughter, Hallie.

Mr. Leighton, who was listed in the 1985 Guinness Book of World Records as the actor who had played the most roles (2,407), began his professional career as a legitimate actor, appearing on live television dramas and at least once on Broadway, in a 1960 Cy Coleman musical called “Wildcat,” starring Lucille Ball. But when the jobs became scarce, he reinvented himself as a walking, talking hall of fame, an impersonator for hire. He researched the characters, created his own costumes — he had more than 400 of them in his Manhattan apartment when he died — and often did his own makeup.

In disguise, Mr. Leighton might pop up in almost any medium. On television, he lit a cigar as Fidel Castro in a commercial for Bic lighters and sold Toyotas as Albert Einstein for a Southern California car dealership. He promoted a Minnesota savings bank as Abraham Lincoln and an Arizona department store as Robert E. Lee. For one bank commercial he portrayed Clark Gable, Groucho Marx, Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, all complaining about other banks that charged for checks. He pitched Cheerios as Alexander Hamilton, beer as Johann Sebastian Bach, early mobile phones as Dracula and cough syrup as the Frankenstein monster. He even played Mr. Whipple’s twin in a commercial for Charmin bathroom tissue.

On film, he played Albert Einstein in a 1982 science fiction comedy “Zapped!” He motivated Westinghouse employees as George Washington and the salesmen of Scania trucks as Gen. George Patton. In print he appeared twice on the cover of New York magazine, once as Henry Kissinger and once as Leonardo da Vinci; he was Uncle Sam on the cover of Time. He was the face of Saul Bellow’s title character “Henderson the Rain King” on a paperback edition of the book, and appeared as a host of characters, including Confucius and Pericles, on the book jacket of Gore Vidal’s “Creation.” He made appearances at gala events and private parties as presidents and wizards and such.

He would go anywhere to do a job and would play anyone: Vince Lombardi, Babe Ruth, Gandhi, Mozart, Charlie Chan, Sherlock Holmes. Ebenezer Scrooge, Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne, Thomas Jefferson, Ernest Hemingway, Charlemagne, Darwin, Wyatt Earp, Walter Cronkite and even Margaret Thatcher were all in his repertory.

“He was best George Washington of his day,” Jay Pearlman, who worked frequently with Mr. Leighton as a makeup artist said in an interview, adding that Mr. Leighton might get two dozen bookings as Washington in a year.

Mr. Pearlman remembered Mr. Leighton’s going to an amusement park in 1979: “I think it was Ashland, Ky. — and he shot four 60-second commercials in one day. He was a wolf man, he was a grandfather, he was General Patton and he was Groucho Marx. He’d call me up and say, ‘We’re going to San Francisco,’ and we’d fly out to San Francisco, and he’d do one Ben Franklin, and we’d get back on the plane and fly home.”

Mr. Leighton was born in the Bronx as Milton Lichtman on Dec. 27, 1921, and grew up mostly in east Harlem. His father, Harry, owned a handful of taxicabs and vending machines. Young Milton served in the Air Force in World War II, and afterward he studied music briefly at a university in Mexico City. He was living in El Paso and working as a shoe salesman when he decided to pursue what he had loved as a child — acting — and returned to New York. In 1949, like a number of Jewish actors, he changed his name in order to de-emphasize his ethnicity and get more work.

“His features were handsome but regular,” Mr. Pearlman, the makeup artist, said about why Mr. Leighton was so well suited to his work. “He could always submerge himself in makeup and in facial contortions.”

In addition to doing character work, Mr. Leighton was also a hand model, and he did numerous radio voices and voiceovers as well as children’s recordings. He and his daughter, Hallie, were the co-authors of two books, “Rare Words and How to Master Their Meanings” and its sequel, “Rare Words II.”

Mr. Leighton was married four times. The first marriage was annulled and the others ended in divorce. Ms. Leighton, who lives in Manhattan, is the daughter of his third wife, Lynda Myles; he is also survived by a son, Ross Leighton, of Queens, whose mother was Mr. Leighton’s second wife, Ruth Markowe.

The anonymity of his work was something Mr. Leighton embraced. Asked once how he was doing, he replied, “I’m alive and well and living in someone else’s face.”

An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of Scania trucks.

Correction: December 1, 2009
OBITUARIES

I am obsessed with Jan Leighton.

Here he is as ALFRED E. NEWMAN.

He could even class up that coonskin as Davey Crockett.

His FRANKENSTEIN is almost as good as his CHURCHILL.

I looked up the books he and his daughter wrote: Rare Words and Rare Words II.

I like his legacy so much.

FREAK MASTER

2009-11-19T13:37:00.004-08:00

This is what Lizzie does with my computer when I am not home. I am a lucky lucky lady

discovery

2009-11-17T01:35:00.003-08:00

I have no idea what this movie is about. But, yes, I think it probably is the ultimate nightmare.

What are you?

2009-11-10T10:57:00.002-08:00

TRUE LOVE MANIFESTED

VRIL

2009-11-08T00:24:00.003-08:00

Did you know there are a lot of songs entitled "Snowblind?"

This one is my current favie.

It's by Judy Henske and Jerry Yester, some married grooveballs. Before jamming with the wifey, Jerry was in the Lovin Spoonful.

Check out the album cover!

And the lyrics written by Henske are amazing.

Fallbrook Sedgewynd gave to Nancy
ringnecks for her coachmen's fancy
Eggs and emeralds, shocking garters
Devilled prunes to stop and start her
Nancy gave to Fallbrook Sedgewynd
neither nods nor time of day
Love is nasty, love is so blind
Love shall make us all go snowblind

Fallbrook Sedgewynd gave to Rosie
twenty sonnets bound in gold
Daily by her cot he'd mosey
Rosie with her stockings rolled
Rosie gave to Fallbrook Sedgewynd
neither hugs nor cozy chats
Love is nasty, love is so blind
Love shall make us all go snowblind

Fallbrook Sedgewynd saved his money
Bought a bear and fed it honey
A bear has little fear of hades
So he ate the luckless ladies
Love is nasty, love is so blind
Love shall make us all go snowblind

The rest of the album sounds nothing like this and is sort of boring. But, what a jam this is! Getting gutteral and wild about wooing, scorning, and a vengeful mauling. The album is called "Farewell Aldebaran." Aldebaran is the largest star in the constellation Taurus. It is fucking enormous. Its name comes from the Arabic word meaning 'follower.' The NASA ship Pioneer 10 will go by it in about 10 million years. (Who's the follower now?)

In learning a little bit about Aldebaran, I also discovered a sect I had never even considered before: Gnostic Neo-Nazis.
Apparently, there are some Aryans who are pretty sure they are aliens who get their power from the Black Sun. Tempelhofgesellschaft. Upon further lazy investigation, I became aware of how occult Nazis were. You can read about it in the most thorough wikipedia article of all time on Ariosophy.

Also you should check out this earlier sci-fi version: VRIL
Do I want a hollow earth? Is it utopia superbutches tunneling underground?

The world is full of weirdos. I never thought Aryan traditions would ever give me hope.

You know I can tell these things

2009-10-21T15:37:00.002-07:00

This is a real movie.

Vibes: The Secret of the Golden Pyramid

From one IMDB reviewer:
"I've seen this movie about 30 times and it always makes me feel good.. I don't know what it is about this movie but it seems to help me through bad times. Theres something in the atmosphere in the film that makes me feel good and the environment where the movie is made is just beautiful. (yeah, sure.. the 'real' film critics are saying that you can't rate a movie just on behalf of the spectacular scenery but FU, I say). I can rate a movie just the way i want to! Isn't that what IMDB is all about? I enjoyed this movie and I hope many others will too. Don't stare at the ratings. If you want to see a fun movie that's not too "serious". Rent this movie and let your brain rest for awhile, just enjoy the the scenery, the acting, the story and the eighties !! Cheers to all from Finland."

FU, I say too.

when it is time to party

2009-10-15T12:54:00.001-07:00

we will party hard.

tonight tonight

2009-10-05T02:10:00.002-07:00

While NASA tries to blow up the moon, I will be turning 24 in Oregon.

"Believe in the resolute urgency of now"
-rabid Cubs fan, B. Corgan

STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING

2009-09-26T02:50:00.005-07:00

Do yourself a favor and navigate over to the Beach Fossils page and listen to their new song "Sometimes."

I am not very good (STILL) at the internet so I don't know how to take the song from myspace and put on here.

But, I can make it a little easier for ya. Just click the words below and select "Sometimes" and you can hear what is like the best song I have heard in two days.

KILLER JAM

Brown County, Indiana.
You might know the view. Right off SR-47, just before Nashville.

I thought I would miss the fall. There is nothing like a midwestern fall. And while I miss those leaves, the air here has that same autumn crispness that brings blush in a nighttime bike ride, a slight tight chill in the lungs.

Covet it, wherever you are.

creature features

2009-09-21T18:56:00.002-07:00

I think it is weird that my first clear thought after becoming stoked on this picture was "I want to have a baby."
Which I don't. At all. Even as I was thinking it I knew that it wasn't true. And when the thing that makes me want to have a baby is photograph of an eroticized pregnant freak with a skeleton mask on in a hippie lake, it makes it less about my desires and more of a sign that under no circumstances should that happen. Ever.

photo via the very very cool Acid Sweat Lodge.

The Symbolical Head

2009-09-15T13:34:00.009-07:00

Phrenology is my favorite quack science. Brains mapped and personalities felt as physical bumps. Heads and persons laid bare.

Austrian physician Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) invented 'craniology' which became 'organology' which was renamed by Johann Christoph Spurzheim as "PHRENOLOGY." Essentially, phrenology assumes that different traits and functions are located in different parts of the brain. Because the distribution of the features across the brain are so regular, they can be mapped on models and conversely, read on actual human heads.

Four things should be considered true according to Gall,as outlined in The Anatomy and Physiology of the Nervous System in General, and of the Brain in Particular
1. Human moral and intellectual faculties are innate;
2. their function depends on organic structures;
3. the brain is the organ of “all faculties, of all tendencies, of all feelings”;
4. “the brain is composed of as many organs as there are faculties, tendencies, and feelings.” (quoted in Samuel H. Greenblatt, “Phrenology in the Science and Culture of the 19th Century” Neurosurgery, 37:4 (1995) 790-805.)

While it may no longer be quite scientific to treat the shape of the cranium as the cause of behavior, feeling, and temperament, phrenologists were some of the first to declare that the mind was located entirely in the brain, now a scientific given. They also suggested a fragmented model where different areas of the brain were responsible for certain tasks or sensations -a simplified, but not inaccurate understanding according to modern neuroscience.

So here I am eating some trader joe O's this morning, reading about phrenology when I noticed something about the chart...

Besides the demanding directive to "know thyself," under the right eye of the model, there is the word "language" written in the well of the socket. It is precisely where I have charcoal gray scars from running into a copcar going fullspeed on my bicycle on mushrooms.

See?

What does it mean that I have blackened scars on the exact portion of my face that corresponds directly to my strength, my medium and mode? Is it as simple as saying that the mangled region is the cause of my anxieties about writing? I was fascinated by language long before the accident. My obsession with words and their function is as old as those large dark circles under my eyes. What change can a tear in the most precious phenological nerve cause? Is it causal or a facial manifestation of a preexisting tension? I've already gotten over the melodramatic allusion of having a black facial scar but now this?? Phrenology and scars both carry the weight of being irreversible.

Where is Orson Squire Fowler when I need him?

Probably in some heaven of octagonal building somewhere or perhaps in his Golgotha of Gothem? He and Henry Ward Beecher ran phrenology offices, examination room and a museum known as “the Golgatha of Gothem” known for its massive display of over 1000 human and animal skulls, and casts from the heads of “the most distinguished men that ever lived” out of a building on 27 E. 21st St in New York.

Old Orson could probably answer a lot of my questions right now. Just check out his fantastic architectural plans for the Octagonal house.

He wanted to build in globular or cycldrical forms as he saw in nature, but saw the costs of building as too high. Octagons were better than squares, it seems. They are incredibly efficient structures. Easy and cheap to heat and cool, as they have less surface area.

And this one was out in Hayward until it was torn down for a highway annex.

A utopian model taken up by Southern grandeur, in Natchez, Mississippi.

Plus he was a vegetarian and advocated for health reform.

Can I get a head massage and a diagnosis please?

Indian Summer Jams

2009-09-12T12:36:00.006-07:00

a recipe for happiness:

Seriously, what took me so long to come around to CSNY?

Skip the romances and get straight to Saramago's urban pessimism. The Cave was the best book I have read in years. YEARS.

PHO -each and every.

life choices

2009-09-09T01:10:00.005-07:00

I am going to move to Ukiah so I can live in this house.

It was built by this man, Sunray Kelly.

“My ideal is to try to help people reconnect to nature through my architecture.” -s.k.

Ukiah is also home to the International Latitude Observatory. While it looks like a nosy neighbor's ideal house, this slitted structure is apparently to study the hypothetical changes in latitude.

Aren't they just imaginary lines anyway? Could they change without our willing redrawing of them?

I guess I could ponder it over my morning coffee at Ellie's Mutt Hut and Vegetarian, which would be my local diner.

Ukiah seems like a drier, trashier Mendocino with a drastically wide range of weird architecture, which I think I could get into. And, according to Mother Earth News, more than half of Ukiah's electricity comes from renewable resources.

Plus, when I was google searching it, all these ads for "marijuana lawyers" came up. I wonder if Amber will become a weed lawyer; more I wonder if you can pay weed lawyers in weed.

warped self-image

2009-08-31T10:01:00.001-07:00

Image208, originally uploaded by joe.mccann.

even ducks get into a ponzo illusion

In the summer, In the City

2009-08-29T13:38:00.002-07:00

NINETY DEGREES IN SAN FRANCISCO!?

I AM IN LOVE WITH THE HEAT.

The Dave Dilemma

2009-08-21T16:04:00.003-07:00

I am in love with Dave Grohl.

What I can't tell is whether I love David Duchovy or Dave Grohl more.
Did I stop forming crushes when I was 9?

Pwess Wewease

2009-08-20T19:49:00.004-07:00

As many of you loyal readers know, I am a huge fan of droopy dogs. Since I was a small child I have loved these dopey, sad-looking four-legged critters. Basset hounds and bulldogs have always been my favorites. Or, at least, they were until I saw this:

No one ever thought to tell me about the BEAR COAT variety of SHAR PEI?
It is a living, wrinkled teddy bear!

PROOF OF TEDDY BEAR ANCESTRY:

FACT

2009-08-19T19:56:00.002-07:00

I will remind myself daily.

San Francisco take note.

go ahead, get excited

2009-08-09T16:29:00.002-07:00

make sure you watch the end!

The only mod I'd ever kiss

2009-08-07T22:26:00.003-07:00

A TRUE PONZO ILLUSION

Also, do I want to pay $16 to see the gris gris? I can't decide

treasures

2009-07-31T00:52:00.003-07:00

Today, I was sitting in Delores park enjoying the rise to summer warmth, just achitchatting, when i realized the homeless man just down-slope from me was clutching a VHS copy of CB4 in his deep sleep. He may have been snoring up a storm, but no noontime park nap is worth losing such a treasure.

Then I bought a new bike and on the way found 3 Muppet Show tapes on the ground. I will probably be clutching them in my sleep too.

Great day, really.

CORRECTION: CULTURE IS DEAD

2009-07-28T01:10:00.002-07:00

Sometimes the world is painfully stupid.

WANDERLUST

“Y’all ready to shake your asana?”

TIME IS A THEIF

2009-07-16T01:40:00.007-07:00

I am feeling great about music lately, especially haunting and distorted things that somehow turn sweet.

LIKE THESE:

WOVEN BONES Your Sorcery

BEACH FOSSILS daydream
a perfect summer jam

I just got the new Grass Widow/RankXerox split tape from wizard mountain. WOWEEWOO

RankXerox

Grass Widow is my favorite bay-area band right now. They are no joke. Celebrate the Mundane is a song and ethos I can really get behind.

all these bands are so good.

Somehow these weird garage/low-fi revival stuff makes me feel really young, excited, and connected. Maybe it is the pastiche of rock and roll as a place where youth's self-awareness coalesced into a cultural form. Maybe it is because I am young in a city with great rock and roll- historically and now.

Time may not be on anyone's side, but young hearts be free tonight.

(did you know that frolicing=freedom?)

MAKE CONTACT

2009-07-13T12:15:00.000-07:00

friends with disko-futur benefits

JUST DESSERTS

2009-07-10T18:59:00.001-07:00

Where do you eat your pie? The center of the universe?

LURKED

2009-06-22T09:43:00.004-07:00

I was checking in on a bunch of internet stuff this morning when I realized I had been CREEPED. LURKED. PERVED ON.

This was not a normal creeping, like a myspace message from some rando who was coming to the bay and thought it would be cool to hang out. No, this was way more direct and epically more sexual.

First, I got an email announcing that SPOWDER added me as a contact on flickr, so natch, I went to look at their profile. It turned out to be no one I knew, but we shared a few mutual contacts. Then I went back and looked at what they had added to favorites. All of the 10 photos they had added contained ladies' hairy armpits. Upon looking at his profile closer, I realized that he was a HAIRY ARMPIT PHOTO COLLECTOR.

The groups he belonged to really gave it away:
Grow a Beautiful Bush & Save our Planet (adult)
Addicted to Hairy Cunts & Pits
German sexy everyday girls and women - nude
Natural Hairy
armpits lover
Female Armpit Hair

I looked at some of the groups. It's almost all photos pilfered from people's profiles and uploads, mostly of of punk and hippie girls, a predictable hairy demographic.

I feel weird about it. I am sure weirdos have lurked on pictures of me and my friends before. I mean, I get it, the internet is public, but I haven't had to think about it or know specifically who it was since that spy thing on myspace. And now, he has added several of my friends.

I think my discomfort is also about being fetishized for something I don't think about or want to be fetishized for. For me, shaving is not a radical or even political stance. I recognize the political moments that went before that allow me to think about it a post-political way. I don't have to worry about whether or not shaving because a few generations of ladies before me did. Unfortunately, it's more that the beauty standards have multiplied and expanded to an endless shifting terrain rather than receded.

Anyway, what I really don't like is having to face the fact some dude is drooling over an already contested area of my body. Isn't it enough to do it privately? While relatively harmless, if you're going to fetishize me without my involvement or consent via the internet, can't you please keep it a secret so it doesn't make me feel weird when I am just trying to have my morning coffee and lurk on the internet in a lessperverse way?

To block or not to block? that is the question.

Some Very Good Things

2009-06-12T19:00:00.004-07:00

1. The Conservatory of Flowers, particularly the pitcher plants.

2. Raw Ice Cream Bars at Cafe Gratitude

3. Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp

Psychedelic Chimps in Costume!

Lancelot Link Roll In the clover
by Roag3

Don't worry, you can see the whole series on netflix watch instantly.

4. Punk
Now I have to go see Limp Wrist and Witchhunt.

NEWS FLASH

2009-06-03T00:08:00.002-07:00

This is apparently a very big deal.

Maybe more than the recession is killing print journalism?

BIG BIG NEWS

2009-06-01T21:55:00.003-07:00

HOLY SHIT. I GOT A JOB AT MILLENNIUM.

Not that Millennium.

This Millennium!

SERIES SERIOUSLY

2009-05-31T16:54:00.004-07:00

Hey does anyone want to start watching a bunch of Czech movies with me? I am very hungover. After vomming into the compost bucket, I spent the better part of the day alternately watching the Mighty Boosh (will Old Greg ever stop being funny?) and looking up Czech movies I want to see. I want to watch some of the new wave stuff, but as part of a wider range.

Right before I left Bloomington, Anders brought home Jiri Menzel's I Served the King of England.

So much of it is about showcasing this class fantasy where by getting closer to the rich through service there is class ascension as if by osmosis. There is this great part I keep thinking about where the broke-ass protagonist throws change on the ground in front of rich men to watch them stoop before him. I am so into that being his private revenge. Stylistically, there were these really weird weak moments especially the ugly computer animated money falling sequences. It wasn't even that they were that bad, it was just that they could've been so cool! The the Nazi eugenics fuck factory sequence was pretty cool too and looked incredible. Jiri Menzel directed Closely Watched Trains which has maybe the best masturbation scene ever. He is also an actor and was in a bunch of Vera Chytilova's early films. I was talking about Daisies the other day and it reminded me that there are a bunch of her movies that I still haven't seen.

I mean the all of Daisies is incredible, but that foodfight scene is fucking phenomenal.

High up on the too-be-watched list is Fruit of Paradise. The color saturation is o.o.c like idyllic backgrounds oozing greens and browns with long-hair and titties everywhere.

There are a lot of beach party scenes too!

I cannot wait to see Prefab Story from '79. Comments on urban planning!

Plus in looking up the complete list of Chytilova's work I started reading about Juraj Jakubisko's work. WOW OH WOW.
He made a saga using the lifecycles and habits of a bee!? The Thousand Year Old Bee?

Plus these stills are from a movie from '69 where weirdos squat a church called Birds, Orphans, and Fools. Plus a new movie called Bathory(NOT the Swedish black metal band) about a Hungarian countess who supposedly bathed in the blood of young Slovak women AND is the most expensive movie in the history of Czech cinema! THIS IS WHAT I AM TALKIN ABOUT.

Anders was telling me about Svankmajer's Alice in Taxidermied Wonderland, Alice.

That one is gonna be on the list for sure.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders -a freaky gothic about menstration!

There is a documentary called Pictures from the Old World from 1972 that looks so incredible.

And there's Forman too!

Do they eat popcorn in the Czech Republic?

a top my wishlist

2009-05-31T16:32:00.002-07:00

is a low-rider slow-kinda easy-going pal.

Return of the Spiel

2009-05-29T00:43:00.006-07:00

After going to the hottest hot tub I have ever been in, John and I stayed up til after the roosters crowed talking about where we are, as people, as culture, and the ideas that in describing our lives makes it both harder and easier to allow ourselves to go on living. I wrote this a year ago today. What's funny is that I think about these conclusions and what lead me there everyday - absolutely.

****************************************************

In this form of relational art, the art becomes not a form of relation but actually in continuous support of it. In these networks, the role of producer, artist, reader, publisher, curator, drinking buddy, musician and audience are constantly in flux. “This is what emancipation means: the blurring of the opposition between those who look and those who act, between those who are individuals and those who are members of a collective body” (Ranciere 279). By allowing for a continuous rotation of roles, where people’s positions do not become invested with cultural capital, these networks become the outgrowth and the breeding ground for the kinds of social engagements the members desire. By avoiding the situating of artist-as-teacher, these fluid relationships, where the status of creator is not fetishized, become the sorts of productive friendships and practices that do not take down the spectacle but get closer to providing what would come after it.

To make art that is not about exclusively reflecting the spectacle is not to deny its existence or further its hold necessarily any more than making art that does attempt to reflect a certain feature or moment in or of the spectacle. The reason the spectacle is a problem is not a moral one –it is not an a priori bad. It is the continuing cause of the impoverishment of life. Daily life, as we know, is what is at stake in the perpetuation of the spectacle. But what is less emphasized is that is the site of contestation as well. Thus the emphasis becomes about the relation between art and daily life.

We can return to the avant-garde to try to understand how to revolutionize more than the aesthetics of daily life, or we can examine the relation between our daily lives and the fulfillment of our desires. What does art give us? A privileged space potentially of criticality, of independent and intentional production. We get to make the things we want to make. We get to create the form of sociality we want to experience. This is at the heart of spectacle critique: sabotaging the impoverishment of life. The thwarting of spectacle is not achieved through hyper-critical discourse alone. It comes through a reengagment with production, with desires, with spaces. It doesn’t require fancy language or meta-anything. It does require simple, direct, and self-aware production. It requires an attempt to better one’s own life through a direct and collective engagement with the world.

This art has a politic. It is not on the same cultural and theoretical level as, say, Rirkrit Tiravanja’s work. It has an intended and enacted politic that is precisely local. An individual or small collective cannot -through art or anything else- overthrow systems of global capital and their nefarious effects. This doesn’t mean we have to give up. We can harness the power of art as a privileged zone of engagement –thinking, making, generating- to provide for ourselves a better possibility. We can work to enact these changes on a wider scale through intentionally created networks. While there is no massive toppling, there is still value in providing for ourselves the things we need and desire. This is endlessly more valuable than a meticulous reading about whether the use of spectacle is thwarting, serving or oblivious to the spectacle itself. By creating exhibitions, resources, and a culture of friendly, funny, and intelligent creation, people are able to forge new spaces for the kinds of work, relations and participation that they are seeking. No amount of writing about the social possibilities of Pad Thai could ever do that.

********************************************

I sometimes wonder what would happen if I kept writing.

talents

2009-05-23T11:17:00.005-07:00

It was on the Santa Cruz boardwalk that I finally found something I am good at!

It should not come as a surprise that it was dog themed. 245 tickets, baybee, in a single game. If only I could pay my rent in arcade tickets.

I'M HAPPY I'M RELAXED

2009-05-21T18:36:00.002-07:00

also, i have a new house in the city. at divis and hayes, across from the popeyes, in a real victorian. it's practically on the wiggle, so stop by.

I'M MAKING IT.

FOR THE BIRDS

2009-05-11T12:52:00.002-07:00

Pale Hoarse at the Marin Headlands from rebecca giordano on Vimeo.

Pale Hoarse played at the Marin Headlands on mother's day. At the top of a hill, marked by a giant white diamond courtesy of Chris Duncan, Kyle and Kim played in an echo cavern with bird calls and lights refracting through.

Did you know that magic has to happen in a time and a place and sometimes that time and place is the magic?

ROLL DEEP

2009-05-10T11:23:00.001-07:00

GET SOME FRIENDS.
MAKE SOME STUFF.
HANG OUT.

SHURTLE

2009-05-10T00:43:00.002-07:00

DO YOU KNOW WHAT CUTE IS?

the dark arts

2009-05-05T13:47:00.002-07:00

how do you get to sit at the feet of an antichrist? can you can that luck? because i feel lucky

(photo by andrew scott)

CALIFORNIA UBER ALLIS

2009-04-18T14:55:00.004-07:00

plus DANIEL HIGGS signing me right to a mystic netherworld on the top of the steepest hill
plus breaking into a ROOFTOP POOL
plus the best snacks
plus HYPHEE

y'all are missed

mud flowed up into lump's pyjammas

2009-04-08T13:23:00.005-07:00

I just went through every tape I have owned since I was in the fifth grade. At the bottom of the box there was a dub with PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA on one side and EVERCLEAR 'So Much for the Afterglow' on the other.

STILL GOOD AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

PS: fuck everclear for disabling embedding on all their videos on youtube

shredding the rad

2009-04-07T10:06:00.004-07:00

My 33 year-old brother Andy who lives in Boulder recently made this is status on facebook:

Andrew Giordano was wondering why all you bro bra's have to wear you goggles for like four hours after getting off the mountain? we get it, you were "shredding the rad" now why don't you shed your gear dorks.
Posted 3 hours ago · Comment · Like

WHOA. With slang like that, maybe we do have more in common?

Sledge-o-matic

2009-04-05T22:09:00.004-07:00

The other day Clancy and Joe and I were talking about sexy-unsexy Halloween costumes. The whole idea is you can make an utterly unsexy thing into a clever Halloween costume by making the sexy version of it. It's supposed to be making fun of the way that squares treat Halloween - an excuse to wear underwear for clothes by calling it a costume or putting on bunny ears. Which is fine, but not very smart or funny and a real waste of a costume tradition. In the sexy-unsexy category, some past highlights for me include Sexy Gallagher (complete with an inflatable hammer and a miniskirt with suspenders over a giant shirt -no big couch) and from this year, Sexy Mr Peanut.

Clancy said that Cara did sexy Garfield, which is a real gem.

Then it hit me, the greatest sexy unsexy to date - THE SCREAM MASK.

Slash that dumpy robe into a sexy tank dress, put some fake eyelashes on those haunting black pits, and smear some red lipstick all over that pouty ghost mouth - IT IS TIME TO GET FREAKY

it really does look like an 'O-FACE'

blaze a trail

2009-04-05T21:57:00.002-07:00

oh, lord, clear a path
the time has come-
westward ho

NO MAN IS AN ISLAND

2009-03-29T12:10:00.005-07:00

THIS IS SUCH A GOOD GOOD SONG

you just can't make it alone.

THE BEST THING

2009-03-28T08:10:00.004-07:00

Meet HUGO, Jared's new dog.

He is a six year old (approx, obv) Walker coonhound. He is a real couch potato, like won't get off of the couch for walks or food, just sits around all day looking handsome.

WHAT A GEM.