Galaxie 500

Man, sometimes it takes me 17 years to catch up with a band's music. Definitely not a visionary in this dept, alas. Galaxie 500 's Today is an amazing record. I guess in 1988 I had other ideas & noises in my heads. Crackly. Pop.

It is a grey, almost fall like morning in Manhattan, that Today record sounds fucking tinglingly great, all the stuff I thought was too cerebral & ethereal sounds razor sharp today.

Coming to this blog in March, 2025: A reappraisal of Radiohead. Meanwhile I gotta go catch up with the Damon & Naomi stuff...

Well he was only 5'3"...

Well he was only 5'3"
But girls could not resist his stare
Pablo Picasso never got called an asshole
Not in New York

The opening sequence of Manhattan set to Richman instead of Gershwin.

Siegel and Schuster Created Superman in 1938, MF!

From Joe Schuster's wiki page

Neal Adams on the late-1970s settlement from DC Comics for which he and other comics creators fought: "Others made millions while Superman's creators lived in near-poverty. Jerry was a clerk and Joe was a legally blind man who lived in his brother's apartment, slept on a cot, and worked as a messenger. I met and fought for their small remaining rights when they both turned only 60 years old. Not 'old' by any definition. The battle took months and the settlement was meager, but it let the men live the remaining years of their lives with dignity. You know what they cared about most? They cared about having their names, once again, associated with their character, Superman! Why? Because it was what they were as people. They were their work."

When Jack Kirby went to DC, he actually called up the creators of Superman to get their blessings before doing his version of the character. (From Ronin Ro's Tales To Astonish.)

Court ruled finally in Siegel and Schuster's favor this week. More here. (Via Comics Journal)

John Waters, Role Model

"Waters is unusually regimented. He wakes up at exactly 6:10 every morning and reads newspapers and drinks tea until 8. He starts writing 'right at eight o’clock—not 8:01, not 7:59,' and works until lunchtime. Waters is rigidly devoted to these morning sessions, and his hired wife plans his travel accordingly. He will go somewhere a day early or stay a day late rather than fly in the morning, even if it means staying at an airport hotel, 'because I need to write five days a week,” he says firmly. 'As far as I can remember I have done that, at least for 25 years. I most never miss a day. When I was young and went out every night—like during the days of Multiple Maniacs and Pink Flamingos—I don’t know how I did it. I took pills and smoked pot every day, but I still made those movies. I don’t think I was as stringent in my Swiss personality, as I call it, but I did make those movies.' "


NY Magazine

Breeders New Album Coming Soon

There is just too much good stuff and bad stuff out there. It makes me question the whole idea of having a blog. I mean, if I am having a good day I might as well just have a webcam attached to my bike's handlebars and when things suck... Anyhow there is nothing like hearing new Breeders songs, here is the extended record release party:



Mountain Battles Record Release Party from The Breeders

Jobs on Paul Rand

Man, Fake Steve Jobs has nailed the wacked out quality of Spaceman Jobs (our hero), as seen in this half assed yet brilliant interview about designer Paul Rand. I can just hear RSJ saying "Sorry, the drugs wore off, Oops. Sorry. ...Will run out and refresh supplies and be back badder than ever. Peace."

Still a great take on a genius curmudgeon by another genius curmudgeon.




Check this great Rand essay to see how correct Jobs is about Rand. The whole fucking site is filled with razor sharp stuff by Rand. By the way, his birth name was the far juicier (or Jewcy-er) Peretz Rosenbaum. I totally prefer Peretz Rosenbaum, don't you?
(via Daring Fireball)

A Buck's Worth & Crazy Glue

Here is a short film by Tatia Rosenthal and Etgar Keret, it is going to be part of a full-length film called 9.99.



Indiewire says, "Rosenthal and Keret's '9.99' is described in a release as ' a stop-motion animated feature-film project, which gives less than ten bucks worth of insight into the human condition.' " If you like this one, I also recommend Crazy Glue:

Social Program: Cappuccino and A Newspaper

"Give people a newspaper and cappuccino to create the feeling they are not second-class citizens.”

That has to be the best line I have heard all week!

From a NYT article about emerging competing bus services, but who cares, the line itself is genius.

Jack LaLanne

My reach is far less than Mark Frauenfelder's at BoingBoing, but it can't hurt to replicate their posting here:

Love Me For My Mind

(As seen at the book fair at the 23rd st armory earlier this year.)

Nerdtastic: The Nerd Handbook

"At some point, you, the nerd’s companion, were the project. You were showered with the fire hose of attention because you were the bright and shiny new development in your nerd’s life. There is also a chance that you’re lucky and you are currently your nerd’s project. Congrats. Don’t get too comfortable because he’ll move on, and, when that happens, you’ll be wondering what happened to all the attention. This handbook might help."

Link (via Mike Monteiro's blog)

Late Riser's Club by Guido Sarducci

Something About Giotto (Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi)

The work reminded me of early Marvel, particularly Steve Ditko. And maybe a little of Mark Alan Stamaty's old work for the Village Voice. Maybe a little Curt Swan... There is too much to say, time is flying by so I at least want to do a quick post that I can return to about his paintings.

I know he is widely regarded as one of the early Renaissance painters, but it is his role as a bridge from iconic pattern making to a western pictoral space that is so exciting to me. The figures convey some true quality, maybe it's their gestures... but at the same time the spaces they occupy are just crazy, filled with loopy architecture and layers of patterned flat planes.


Plus, yeah, the whole Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi is kind of a wraparound comic book. So, in material terms, any painter is gonna look at it and say, "man, when did you start this job?" I think he did the frescoes in chronological order, it just reminds me of early Ditko Spider-Man covers.

Oh, and yes, we don't know if Giotto did the job, or if it's school of Giotto, but whatever, these paintings are great, as is the whole building.

Next Up: Caravaggio, The Neal Adams of the 1600's or what...?

WTF is wrong with this picture?

What The Fuck is this? A purple san-serif "5" on the 5 dollar bill? Who said that aesthetics precede ethics? Well, they do a complicated fandango anyhow. This is a visual argument that we are utterly lost as a culture.

How ugly and shitty can they make things that look just fine the way they are? Do the shit designers and the retards that commissioned this abortion think this money will be harder to counterfeit? 10th graders with photoshop are trembling before our mighty lack of taste. The mighty North Koreans, apparently the masters of modern counterfeiting, will vomit when they see the utter shite they are now expected to copy.

The euro replaced the cool money of europe (give me a Delacroix and some full frontal nudity, America!), so what, we have to beat the euros at making our money look like shit?

Delacroix and Lincoln, men of that caliber would never approve of such ugliness.
Link to wiki on the ugly fin here.

Back from Rome, winelists hitting the blogs, too much to write about

Hey, that's my winelist Ma! Terroir winebar finally opened last night, and the blogs actually wrote about the winelist concept that I created in collaboration with Paul Grieco. Neat!

I need to blog up my first trip to the european continent in eons, there's alot of notes and snapshots of Roman graffiti & stickers to post as well but at this second, the lists hitting and the t-shirts that we did getting some play--that feels good.

Links: photostream of winelists, stickers
Grub St, Dr. Vino, Terroir winebar homepage