Why? Why? WHY?

Random bike basket in my neighborhood:


Random public trashcan in my neighborhood (about 2 yards away):

I have used a folding basket on my own bikes to prevent this particular petty cruelty from being inflicted on my trusty steed. Should the city invest in a bike basket shaped trashcan design to encourage litterbugs to reform?

Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Fuck THAT

Obama To Fire His First Gay Arabic Linguist
Do we ever get out of high school? Enough is enough. Fire homophobic assholes. Fire republican hypocrite pederasts.

More:

CHOI: Well, when I got the letter, I was extremely angry. I was angry -- I mean, the letter is basically saying bottom line, Lieutenant Dan Choi, you're fired. You're a West Point graduate, you're fired. You're an Arabic linguist, you're fired. You deployed to Iraq, you're willing to deploy again, doesn't matter. Because you're gay, that's enough grounds to kick you out.

But the biggest thing that I'm angry about is what it says about my unit. It says that my unit suffered negative good order -- negative actions -- good order and discipline suffered. That's a big insult to my unit.

I mean, all the insult that the letter can do, to say that I'm worthy of being fired, you know, that's nothing comparing to saying that my unit is not professional enough, that my unit does not deserve to have a leader that is willing to deploy, that has skills to contribute.

Here Comes The Clutter

I still like Yahoo, and if I had a spare 40 zillion or whatever, maybe I would help them out of this mess. If I were Jerry Yang I would have some kind of poison pill to prevent Microsoft from Hotmailing my simple, usable interface. (Note that the wiki says "see also Pyrrhic victory".)

Here is what I think they should do when Ballmer comes knocking (more ideas here).
For me, it is not about business, it is about a company coming by and ruining some tools that I use everyday. When Hotmail was purchased by Microsoft, it turned almost unusable with crap plastered all over a once simple UI.

And, yeah, I have a Gmail account, but their way of doing things isn't always right. (Try sending yourself a script and having Google decide it might be a virus--hey, I sent the damn thing to ME).

As long as the 6B pencil and blank index cards are still available, I will survive...

A Visit to the Cat Challenge Room

"The researchers enlisted 18 individuals with cat allergies and randomly assigned them to receive one week each of zafirlukast or placebo. Subjects volunteered to endure a one-hour stay in a specially designed "cat challenge room." This carpeted room, home to a couple of house cats, contained bedding that was shaken right before a study volunteer entered the habitat. "The room provides an extremely intense cat exposure, 10 to 100 times the level of allergens you would find in the home," says Wood. "

$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.

Attaturk Youtube example of bloggy wit and relevance

As a followup to the idea of bloggers as source, compare the NYT coverage
of the Turkish YouTube ban with BoingBoing's entry. The AP/NYT's coverage
is garbled and even makes the Turkish government's action look more
ominous than it is. The BB coverage is less hysterical, more informative AND wittier.

As per Jay Rosen, we do need dedicated journalists in some form, but this
is an interesting example of the shift.

Camus wrote somewhere of the need for critical journalism, a paper that
would criticize the other papers. Perhaps we are seeing that emerge in the
blogosphere.

We Are All Sources Now

I haven't really understood why Dave Winer got so pissed off at "mainstream media", even as I sometimes bought his criticisms of individual instances of stupidity. But his post clarifying bloggers as primary source (at least in some instances), rather than consumers of news is good.



An interview with Jay Rosen is here.



The thread connecting Do It Yourself ethics/aesthetics to all of this interests me.

Dave, your argument is starting to gel. You have made any number of criticisms of old media in the past, but this is a critical one.






I look at the loop as a fluid one (even if the existing hierarchies don't appear to represent it that way). Source->Newspaper->Blog and then (maybe)->Newspaper is what that existing map looks like. But now it's Source->Blog->Newspaper->Source->Blog. The reality may be more spaghetti than this neat little line. Call it a Spaghetti of News instead of a River!







This dynamic is more fluid when the source is part of the story, as it is with tech issues(for example), than a report on a single incident. Then the feedback whine commences! If Jobs had a real blog instead of a manifesto on DRM * and he responded to the "Comments" on his DRM screed -- the "Comments" being the newspapers, record company whores, bloggers, then you would have a juicy example of this feedback in action.







Not everyone will have or wants a blog, but anyone CAN. This is town meeting democracy + D.I.Y. writ large. Hmmm... "We are all Sources now."







*(not that I didn't agree with his manifesto, not that I don't like the form, b/c manifesti are cool--and not that I don't love FSJ...)

Silver Surfer poster

There is a Silver Surfer poster on phone booths all over NYC advertising what is likely another craptastic comics movie.

It is not anywhere as cool as Kirby's Silver Surfer.

But for me it is still like a religious icon. Even if all the solo Silver Surfer comics were lame as shit, even if Black Racer got better dialogue, there is still a call to (Marvel)mania that stirs the spirit.

If they wanted to do a good Silver Surfer, they would give Bruce Timm the project and do it through Pixar. Frozone had the vim!

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.

While I am waiting for my notes to dry...

I just came back from Berkeley, former home of Beserkeley Records and new home of Beckett and Yair. I filled a notebook with stuff and am contemplating the uses of this blog now that I have too much unformulated stuff that needs to get to my studio more than the Halfway House of Ideas aka Blogista!

While I ponder this, ponder Jonathan Lethem's essay on copyright, The Ecstasy of Influence, in Harper's here.

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

Frank Stella and James Brown, Super-Villains of Cool

As they say on Wikipedia, "this is a stub of an article". I am posting in hopes of expanding my ideas.

Frequently he dwells on the nature of the sound of which he is forever in pursuit: "Hard. Flat. Flat." James Brown

"My early stripe paintings... (had)...a weighted flatness, a dimensionally coherent presence to the new surface of painting, the cotton duck field..." Frank Stella

I saw Frank Stella's recent show in Chelsea shortly before James Brown died on xmas. The 2 are linked in my head in some Marvel Super-Villain Team Up way. (This is more Dr. Doom and Namor than World's Finest, if you know what I mean.)

Both are in favor of fast cars. Repetition. Flat, hard and still rhythmic.

Both favor stringent, eccentric use of instruments.

Lethem quotes Robert Palmer that "The rhythmic elements became the song....Brown and his musicians began to treat every instrument and voice in the group as if it were a drum..." There is a level of bravado in both... at the Stella show I was reminded of the Nick Nolte painter in Scorcese's New York Stories entry, at breakfast. A younger, handsome artist dude looking painter (who has just slept with the assistant that Nolte's character is infatuated with) is greeting by the disheveled master, sloppily grinning and slathering paint onto his work, putting the kid into his place -- utterly irrelevant to the painter.

The fucked up whirlygig, part sculpture of Stella and the grunts, hollers of James Brown don't need our sympathy, our fanboy enthusiasms. They are inscrutable, wacked out and somehow authentic architectures.

Next up: "Philip Guston and Jonathan Richman: Jewboy Geniuses on The Prowl"

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.