This Blog Has Officially Gone Fishing

Tweeted this today:

Going on a social media break til after 5771/Rosh Hashanah. Reach out to me via email/ /www.stevensolo.com

Of course, I haven't used this blog in months. Social media killed it. The whole notion of documenting my responses to art and life here seemed so long-winded and archaic--and the immediacy of Twitter seemed to enbolden me to carry on in some less artificial voice. At first, at least.

This blog is a pretty solid archive/catalogue of my obsessive interests. Perhaps in 5771, post Rosh Hashanah it will make sense to continue it in this or another form.

For now, there's more than enough to last through the end of 5770.

Here's one of my first entries to go out on:

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Rant on Rebuilding my Studio

I want to be like Hokusai, who changed his name & moved to a fresh new studio & took up a new artistic identity at the same time. Instead I would buy cats (if I weren't so allergic) so that the police could find something living in my apt. among the newspaper clippings when I die here.

I am engaged in a project I call "rebuilding my studio". Once I named it, the physical difficulties all seemed to make sense. I am supposedly purging my supplies, reference material, decoration and equipment. Each category of CRAP has its own box with a LARGE BLACK MARKERED description so I can wrap my head around it. Like "DRAWING MATERIALS" "BIKE STUFF".

Considering that after 8 years of living here, I can't find the kind of erasers I use in a shelf containing boxes of bicycle supplies that I fantasized using, mixed with a kind ofpaint I used for a project 5 years ago this is probably a good idea.

Most of what I need I can fit into a decent sized backpack. What IS all this STUFF?

Anyway the "desired outcome" is "A functional studio workspace I enjoy working in with adequate and clear storage for supplies I need, archive completed work, accessible storage for related and front burner work-in-progress." (My mission statement on this motherfucker.)

This is all a delusion. At some point I will just get fed up with interior decorating my soul and just flail out and make new stuff again until I find myself backed up against the wall of all the old crap (some of which is the stuff I have been making) and, gasping for air, begin to repeat the whole activity again.

lowlywaiter: Don't Bug Me

Coming This Summer: Son of lowlywaiter or lowlywaiter Rides Again.

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.

Oh Shit, To Be Human Again

"People have too many sexy-looking leather date books in their lives and not enough spaced-out moments in stretched-out T-shirts, listening to the magical emanations of other heads." Cintra Wilson on Daniel Johnston, see here.

Here is a Pere Ubu video (via Alan Partlow) that reminded me of that quote.




"Let's watch the whole world just goin slow/Let's watch the whole world goin slow..."

The Greater The Buzz, The Harsher The Buzzkill

Dilbert on Internet Addiction

$200 is just a down payment on enlightenment!

Open Letter to Fake Steve Jobs:

FSJ,

What the media don't get is that the iPhone tech pricing was the followup to
your Stanford speech. You are transcending tech to administer a swift THWACK of
the bamboo stick to the shoulders of your grasshopper-disciples.

The iPhone release & pricing swap are at once performance art and an act of enlightening the faithful.

"The real function of a spiritual friend is to insult you"

p134
The Myth of Freedom
Chogyam Trungpa

Namaste--I honor the place where I treasure my 1st gen Shuffle while watching
the newbie grasshoppers get burned, not without a certain nostalgia.

Wilde World

The Mixer (Men and Women Together)

"He thinks he wants a conventional marriage with a compliant wife, but what he really wants is to be overwhelmed by the female life force. In the screwball comedies, the woman doesn’t ask her man to “grow up.” She wants to pull him into some sort of ridiculous adventure. She has to grow up, and he has to get loose—the opposite of the current pattern."



David Denby in this week's New Yorker.



I couldn't find the Jonathan Richman song I wanted to post here, but here is a Reason To Be Cheerful: J.R. doing an intro to Girlfren:

Reasons to Be Cheerful 2/14/07

Time to clear the decks with a "shopping list" post in no particular order. The nature of this blog is that I might not develop all ideas or lists but part of the experiment is the simple act of posting.

Lots of quotes rambling around my head today...

-The Search by John Battalle - (book) Think of an act we have always been engaged in, now refined to the point where it is a new context for hunting and gathering. The Tesla connection, aka "The lessons of Tesla":

"I wanted to invent things, but I also wanted to change the world. I wanted to get them out there, get them into people's hands so they can use them, because that's what really matters." Larry Page p.66

This is another interation of "Real artists ship" (Steve Jobs).

Bill Gross' IdeaLab story is also worth reading.

"...he was fascinated with the way Spielberg ran movie sets. 'He walks around all day long using his brainpower to creatively enhance things around him...

'I'd always thought you had to take the good with the bad. How audacious to think your job could be perfect all day long.' " Bill Gross p. 99

-Bruce Nauman at the Berklee Art Center-What would I be doing today if I had seen this stuff instead of the Giacometti in Dec. 1979?Manipulating the T-Bar, Get Out of My Mind, Abstracting the Shoe, Legal Size all very, very good.

-Guston, Lichtenstein and modern posters at SF MOMA. Guston Red Sea, The Swell, Blue Light. Paintings hung together like comics panels. Man, this is it.

The Lichtensteins look hard and brittle, but just right. Mirror, 1970 hits me now in a way that the Rothko and Giacometti there don't. I feel far away from those masters right now.

Too Much to Take: Cornuto! or How it all feels a little too Fassbinder in here. (If there were a link to Elvis Costello's version of The Specials' "What I Like Most About You Is Your Girlfriend" I would definitely list it here.)

-Shadows and Fog quote, "Like our illusions? No, they NEED our illusions!"

-Steven Shaw Turning The Tables (book). Great critiques and expertise-oriented understanding of the food business. Shaw got turned onto fine dining while being wined and dined by law firms in NYC. (Will cite page when I get my copy back.) Right on critique of the "cult of authenticity". Even though I appreciate Saveur/Slow Food for their contributions, this is a handy bit of sharp thinking from the FatGuy aka eGullet.com guy.

-Tickle Me Almo (dovar):Here is a Pete Townsend quote I would throw at the reverential NYRB reviewer who likes "Cinema master" Almodovar more than "speed freak" Almo. Just substitute "Pedro" for "Pop" in the quote below.

"Pop has become solemn, irrelevant, and boring. What it needs now ismore noise, more size, more sex, more violence, more gimmickry, more vulgarity. Above all it desperately needs a new messiah who will take things right back to the glamour, power, and insanity of the Elvis Presley age."

-Shit testsOK, it is ridiculous to rationalize all clumsy conversational moves as intentional. But hey, being ridiculous is not so bad. I can keep it up for awhile longer.

"Hey baby/I'm out of favor/Can't always be/The right flavor" Graham Parker Nobody Hurts You (Harder Than Yourself)

OTOH, as a waiter I can talk to people, why is it that as ME I cannot? There are a few rules, I am selling something, it is a work interaction. Imagine giving someone free cookies if they don't like your flip comment about feminism, the war, your swearing habit, your love, your hate, your indifference... Maybe I need to carry a few "comps" in my backpack and just treat everyone, everywhere as if they were my "customers".

-Marvelmania, or just mania as an aesthetic. Or an anaesthetic? I notice that many posts are about creating a state of mania. Art that triggers this is GOOD. Everything else is just OK.

Anyhow, I liked that Brice Marden show, didn't I? But even then I was drugging myself on Sweet and ignoring museum guards who were in my face...

My comment to Grey's Anatomy creator

(Alas, I got hooked on a TV show while hanging out with my Mom. Worse, I actually posted on the blog of this nighttime soap opera. Well, one mission of this blog and of mine is the SHAME ATTACKING EXERCISE, and this is one. I am publically admitting that I am a fan of "Grey's Anatomy", and not just the Spaulding Grey one!)

I will not be happy until you have Burke french kiss a man to make up for his bonehead offensive remarks. I agree that bouncing Isiah Washington and replacing him with another African American actor would be racist. But Mc "Gay, I love Gay" needs to kiss a man on TV.

He has done your wonderful show and the great character you & he have created a great disservice with his homophobia.

You can say "trust the art, not the artist" but this is more than someone having offensive politics, it is someone giving voice to hate and then playing a subtle theatrical role. Everytime Washington's character shows up, I expect him to say "f**g*t", he just destroyed Burke with his unprofessional behavior.

The bottom line, as someone said, is that if T.R. Knight had dropped the "N" word he would be off the show. This is no different.

I wouldn't write if I weren't a fan. Let Burke get a nice wet one, linger on the shot and all will be well.

I'd Rather Feel Like Shit Than Be Numb

Wig Wam Bam: a meditation

If all I do is spread the irresistable gospel of The Sweet at their peak I will occasionally feel fulfilled. The calculated bubble-gum AM trebly sound of Wig Wam Bam on "repeat" puts me in touch with 1972. That is, it is a time machine that evokes ALL of being 11 years old listening to glam and glitter rock, reading Marvel Comics and Lester Bangs' Creem magazine.

As far as Creem and Marvel were concerned, punk rock had already been invented. Gil Kane inked by Johnny Romita Spider-Man howling in pain, ostensibly about Gwen Stacy getting pitched, but more globally for me as a zinger of expressionistic URGH or AARGGH lasered its way into my cortex, displacing Curt Swan gentility for the next decade or more. That inking style and those Artie Simek handlettering was an analogue to festering pubescence, hormones, awkwardness... The SHINY SURFACE of bubble-gum was gleaming Neal Adams draftsmanship all over Green Lantern/Green Arrow, Batman, X-Men.

Where is the Hernandex Bros. Comics Journal interview #1, where Gilbert says, "That's the way it was with me...the Batman TV show meant everything and long division didn't mean shit."?

Not only does the literal meaning of that sentence ring true, but the essential vibration of that sentence is a touchstone.

Listen again to the opening chords and candy coated lyrics...

Hiawatha didn't bother too much
'Bout Minnie Ha-Ha and her tender touch

Till she took him to the silver stream

Then she whispered words like he had never heard

That made him all shudder inside when she said

Wig-wam bam, gonna make you my man
Wam bam bam, gonna get you if I can
Wig-wam bam, wanna make you understand

Try a little touch, try a little too much

Just try a little wig-wam bam

Escape Artist or Chickenshit Coward?

Here is a character-building shame attacking confession. I was scheduled for a brain scan MRI today since the cancer is in my family history.

I showed up on time. Checked in, filled out every form they gave me. My biggest concern was having all my cards demagnetized at that point.

"Take the elevator behind you & see Donovan" I was told. Of course I expected to see the pop folk singer, dressed like Dylan's younger brother circa 1966, an acoustic guitar slung over his shoulder saying something like "The continent of Atlantis was an island which lay before the great flood ...".

Instead it was a Marvin Hagler -on-a-good-day-look-alike who gave me instructions on putting all my stuff away and then how to lie down in the tunnel like contraption.

He gave me earplugs and the machine began to whir. I was immobile, going into a tunnel. The tunnel contained me like a coffin. I couldn't breathe. I hadn't prepared in any way for this.

The fucking thing was too claustrophobic for words. I freaked out & bailed!

I told Donovan I needed a minute to collect myself. Did he smirk or was he understanding? A sphinx.

Well, I could have talked myself into the project, but I was unstrapped as quickly as I had been readied. The technicians seemed used to this everyday aborted mission. Another brain scan pussy.

I am more disturbed by my own unmanly cowardice than I am by the prospect of a tumor for which they don't have any decent treatment anyway. I called the doctor's office & left a message...well, a confession. They will probably play it around the office for laughs. Hopefully at the office holiday party if it makes the Top Ten. Oh well.

I'd never make it a day at Guantanamo.

For an excellent Mister Miracle by Jack Kirby in CBR format click here. (The whole series archive site is here.) His vision of infernal machinery is great.