actual new-news first: i’m putting some illustrations & prints up for sale in the vericon art show, so if you’re in the boston/cambridge area, you should check it out. SWEEEEET.
greetings from sunny florida where we are currently experiencing record-breaking low temperatures. this is something it has been doing since we (the fam and i) arrived here and (i am assured by weatherpersons) will probably stop doing immediately pursuant to our departure. i thought, since florida is a land of interesting and exciting differences from those i have lived, i would relate a particularly awesome incident that occurred to me today:
i was in attendance at a juried gallery opening here in vero beach; one whose entries ran the gamut from incredibly (humorously, really) amateurish to very artful and expressive. at one point, upon introducing me to a local artist, my gran remarked that ‘he just published a graphic novel‘. this, given that it was self-published, is a bit charitable but (frankly) i’m just going to stop drawing the distinction whenever people mention it because it’s more trouble than help to explain. this is particularly true when i consider that it’s usually a distinction that’s detrimental to however i’m perceived anyway, so it’s kind of a win-win to leave it alone. but (as usual) i sidetrack myself. upon mentioning this, the woman asked me, “oh, a graphic novel. is that like, all full of sex and stuff?”
i am fully aware that (even in these enlightened times of graphic novel mass-marketability) a time must come in every comic artist/author’s life when s/he must explain that graphic novels are not badly-drawn porn but in fact are books with plots and things. but still, it was shocking and hilarious to find myself at that moment. i replied as simply and inoffensively as possible: “no, it’s more like … a really long comic book.” which seemed to satisfy her. then i meandered over to look at her art piece. it was, in fact, a vaguely biracial, child-sized (by barbie standards) plastic doll denuded and glued to piece of wood (redundantly painted brown). it had a black afro and its shoes were also glued to the board, squirreled away in the corner like some strange product of a deranged fetish. its other clothes were nowhere to be found. the price was $75, i think.
for some reason, i decided to reread some of sir arthur conan doyle’s the adventures of sherlock holmes. it’s a pretty entertaining read–for the treadmill. it’s also an interesting window into early 19th century society. take, for example, all the clothing that does not even exist anymore:
“…when last seen, in black frock-coat faced with silk, black waistcoat, gold albert chain, and grey harris tweed trousers, with brown gaiters [wtf?] over elastic-sided boots.”
elastic-sided boots? first of all, boots made out of elastic? secondly, only the sides? what’s the rest of the boot made of? sherlock also seems to have some interesting fetishes (warning, taken out of context):
“i can never bring you to realise … the suggestiveness of of thumb-nails.” dirty, dirty, holmes.
meanwhile, in the real world, i’ve been working full time at pelli and full time at the graphic novel. the september xeric deadline was two days ago and i had been keeping rather odd hours (i.e. graphic novel 6AM-8AM, work 8AM-6PM, then graphic novel 6PM-2AM). good times. but i got what i feel was a decent grant proposal out (just under the wire), and i’ll keep my fingers crossed. my bosses at work were extremely understanding about the deadline and the PR folks even helped me bind and print, etc. so a huge thank-you to all the pelli folks enabled me to meet my deadline instead of being a giant work-related cock[grant]block like a lot of other firms might have done.
for those of you who didn’t already know that, by the by, i’ve been working at pelli clark pelli architects here in sunny new haven, CT for a few months now. it’s terrific and all the buildings are tall.
anyways, i’m going to try to get some photos up of the draft edition of the book (with covers!) because i finally remembered to keep one copy for myself. unfortunately, i did not yet manage to trim / bind it. i’m also going to start trying to get photos up of the work i’ve been doing here at pelli. it’ll be helpful for preceptorship reports and / or portfolio documentation. so far there has been a lot of vague jello (click through to see a bigger version):
worm's eye view, santa rosa
i just started reading oscar wilde’s “an ideal husband”. it has, of course, proven to be a testament to the well-earned character of wilde’s much-lauded (and as
much reviled) wit. he is so very cognizant of his subject matter and familiar with his circle’s mode of speech as to render him wodehouse’s equal. every line is a quip; it’s not at all hard to imagine wilde pissing off enough people to get his ass freeze-dried in the clink after making some off-color, offhand, statement about some chancellor getting hid beard tangled in the wrong beaver.
relative believability of his incarceration aside, wilde has a wildly enjoyable turn of phrase turn unexpectedly pertinent more often than I expected:
“families are so mixed nowadays. indeed, as a rule, everybody turns out to be somebody else.”
a bit of a yogi berra meets early victorian england. bizarre. also:
“you think science cannot grapple with the problem of women?”
wow. that’s the humorous offensiveness of a proto-family guy as (in my imagination) delivered by leo spaceman of “30 rock”. 30 rock does oscar wilde. cash cow waiting to happen….
every time i go to pitchfork, i desperately want the cache-seeming online music mag to be relevant, accurate, and incisive. while i can’t argue with the prose style–the well-read, well-listened, and (probably) well-heeled editors clearly have a better idea what they’re talking about than i do–i just never seem to see eye-to-eye with them about the ratings they give. i went there the other day in the hopes of finding a few new albums to listen to; naturally, i checked out their “best new music” section. after giving a few of those a preview listen (through their site), i decided i wasn’t really connecting with the things they saw in these albums. it wasn’t an issue of genre–i was trying to listen to things that pitchfork clearly thought were part of my general oeuvre.
after a bit of frustration, i checked out this review of tunng. i was a bit shocked by the low rating, but i moved on–everyone can like or dislike a thing based on their taste, right? besides, it wasn’t like they panned it or anything.
it wasn’t until a few days later (today) that i found out what truly exceptional, unforgivable ignorance they were capable of. (okay, i’m being hyperbolic here, but run with it.) anyways, i was reading about various albums on metacritic and comparing their ratings with those of pitchfork. pitchfork consistently rated lower than the average on high-rated albums. i’m going to go out on a limb and assume that they average about the same overall score as the … average score (of aggregated sources). given that, my view is that they probably just like to preserve that cache i seemed to have deluded myself into attributing them by rating albums like veckatimest a 9.0 even when said album is borderline unlistenable for noticeable segments (also colloquially referred to as “songs”).
but i’m digressing.
i ended up stumbling onto an old review of “figure 8″ by elliott smith. though the overall score (a 6.9) wasn’t too unfair (i’d have put figure 8 at perhaps a 7.5), it was their commentary that drove me off the wall. after meandering through the various topics of hipster cultism and infighting, “authenticity”, and smith’s too-easily accessible songs, the author somehow found his way to touching on the songs actually on the album. from there, he made a mess. he managed to put down “son of sam” and “wouldn’t mama be proud”, two of the best songs on the album; following this, he decided to saint “pretty mary k” (probably the single worst song on the album) as the salvation of the whole record. too round out a show of ignorance, he managed to ignore “happiness” completely–probably not only the best song on the album, but also a contender for the best song ever written by smith. good job, pitchdoofus. bah. hmbug. no chrstms ths yr! n n vwls thr!
