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Brain droppings du jour.

Wednesday, October 1st, 2014

1. Saw this on Buzzfeed. Did not click.

Wow. I had no idea the vegetarians of Thailand were so intense. That picture is crazy. It looks like there are explosions and shrapnel and someone is throwing a sledgehammer at the man in the skeleton mask. I always took vegetarians to be a more mellow sort of person, but apparently I was wrong. And as for severe body modification, I say (brace yourselves) phuket (NO I WILL NO APOLOGIZE FOR THAT).

2. I am a huge fan of taking things that are considered rubbish and making them into things of beauty. Right now people are really-super-obsessed with a show called Adventure Time. I’ve watched a few episodes, I can’t really get into it, but it has a rabidly devoted fan base.

My point is some guy found a trash-chair and made it into an Adventure Time chair. Delightful. Good for him.

3. Two internet things that taste great together = Wikipedia and TL;DR. I assume everyone knows what Wikipedia is, and TL;DR stands for Too Long; Didn’t Read. One sees that often as a comment at the end of multi-page articles with a lot of words. Well, as y’all know, almost all of Wikipedia’s articles are long so there’s a Tumblr website called TL;DR Wikipedia and I can’t stop reading it.

Head’s up: some hit a little hard and will make suck your teeth and make that hissing noise. Still good though.

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Two artists that have piqued my interest lately.

Tuesday, September 23rd, 2014

Does everyone here know what needle-felting is? Basically, needle-felting is taking fluffy wool (before it’s spun into yarn) and stabbing it repeatedly with a big needle until it forms the desired shape. Wool does that because the fibers have microscopic hooks and these hooks get tangled when the stabbery occurs. It’s a very versatile art. You can build things over a metal or wood sub-structure, you can do a flat piece, add stitches and beads, etc. Here are some pictures I found on Pinterest (most of these track back to Etsy, if you like these pieces, go to Etsy and buy them – support artists!):

By the way, needle-felting doesn’t have to be about animals, it just so happens that I love animals so those are the samples I chose. The two artists that have caught my eye recently are both textile artists. One was brought to my attention by my friend Gem (thank you Gem). I love these soft insect sculptures by Yumi Okita. She uses a combination of a canvas-like material, wire, fake fur, fabric paint and sewing to make these moths and butterflies. If you go to her Etsy shop she also made a flower that is stunning. Big fan.

And the other artist is a woman named Steph Laberis. She does animal illustrations in a charming 1950s/1060s style. I think she really captures the essence of the beasties she’s rendering. I own her potoo and momonga prints (got them at Shana Logic if you want them).

But she has many other works that if I could find them for sale I would snap them up. I mean, the three armadillos (the small one is called a Pink Fairy Armadillo, that’s why it has a wand) is amazing, is it not? And the penguins? And the maned wolf mama? There’s very few pieces I do not adore.

Ms. Laberis has a blog you can visit to find out what she’s up to AND the header has a grumpy dung beetle, so, you know, best header for anything ever.

Now you may be wondering, we were talking about needle-felting, what the hell happened? Look at me bring it all together. In addition to drawing wonderful things, Steph needle-felts sculptures of some of her drawings so they can exist in a three-dimensional space, which is awesome. I may have to explore the wonderful world of needle-felting.

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I’m sorry. Have some charts.

Tuesday, September 9th, 2014

Work has been a mean one lately and I have to clean my apartment in a rush because family is coming to town in a week and The Moomins was like, “Great! We’ll have them all come to your apartment for brunch!” and I was like, “Yeah, I should probably get a functioning sink then” so when I’m not pulling fourteen-hour days at work I’ve been furiously scrubbing and wiping and putting things away so my relatives don’t think I live like a candidate for an episode of Hoarders. There’s going to be twenty of them and apparently they will all want a place to sit, the whiny needy people that they are, so I have to clear the stuff off all the tables and seats. Whatever, it’s a pain and it’s prevented me from blogging as often as I’d like, so while I am battling the pile of home-repair debris please enjoy these internet nuggets of information.

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A coupla things.

Saturday, August 30th, 2014

1. If I have a low-resolution image but I still want to use it and I want it to look good, I would maybe do this because this is rad:

http://www.photoshoptutorials.ws/photoshop-tutorials/special-effects/quick-tip-create-triangle-pixelation-effect-photoshop/

2. Speaking of design, someone okayed a photo of a man diving into a pool for a New York fitness club ad that was on one side of my Facebook screen. Aside from the fact of why this was a targeted ad for me, it was so small and grainy that I thought it was a portrait of Doctor Finkenstein from Nightmare Before Christmas mutating in a pool. Here is the ad:

And here’s who I see every time I see it.

3. In addition, Facebook is sending me this over and over again and I find it off-putting.

What? What Rothman thing wouldn’t you understand? Adult-onset diabetes? An inability to whisper? I hate this shirt.

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I went to a cat fashion show. Yes, you heard me correctly.

Wednesday, August 13th, 2014

Every so often I would see that there had been a cat fashion show in New York where cats were in costumes and looked peeved. Despite my love of kitties I had little or no interest in seeing felines dressed in festive ensembles traipsing down a runway. However, recently I “liked” the Mayor’s Alliance for NYC’s Animals Facebook feed and therefore I see their posts. One of their posts was this:

Now this is different. My entry fee goes to support beasties in need, I get to go inside the Algonquin Hotel, a national treasure of a building, AND I get to see haute couture kittehs? Well, now I’m totally in. I bought myself a ticket and when I told The Moomins I was going she said, “You got me a ticket too, right?” I was like, “No, do you want to go?” and she was all, “HELL YES I want to go” so off we went. Shortly after we got to the hotel we were greeted by Matilda, the house cat of the Algonquin.

http://www.algonquinhotel.com/algonquin-cat

People went CRAZY. They all ran up to her, begging her to face this way, banging the concierge phone on the counter to get her attention. Here’s a shocker: she would have none of it.

I love how in this picture where The Moomins is talking to her, Matilda looks all, “Do I know you?”

There were a ton of professional photographers there. I just brought my cellphone so all my pictures look like they were taken with a potato. If any of the pictures I show here look good it’s because they were taken by someone with a real camera and I wrote their names in the corners so they would get credit.

The cat show was upstairs and didn’t start for another fifteen or twenty minutes so in the meantime The Moomins and I wandered around the ground floor. Set up were gift bags for the raffle, various foodstuffs like crudites and fancy cheeses and an enormous cake with (I’m sad to say, extremely poor) renditions of Matilda and Tara, the cat that rescued that little boy a few months ago. The LEDs in the base were a nice touch, though. Check out Observer’s list of CBD oils that can be very beneficial for your pets that suffer from pain, anxiety, and improves their mood.

We eventually worked our way upstairs to the actual fashion show. I don’t know what I expected. Maybe a runway or something. It turned out to be various cats perched on pillows wearing costumes inspired by Broadway shows. Their emotions ranged from, “Eh, it could be worse” to “This is WAAAAAAY too many people” to “Please, if you have any compassion in your heart kill me now and end this living nightmare.” First you encountered Vito who was sleeping for most of the time he was on display. He was the chillest cat ever.

Behind him was a cat dressed as the lead from Legally Blonde. The owner informed me that this was totally appropriate because this cat was raised by a chihuahua who adopted him as a kitten when she lost all her pups (Elle, the main character of Legally Blonde has her chihuahua with her all the time). He was also calm, but I think he would have preferred to have slightly less people flashing lightbulbs in his face.

There was the Persian representing Wicked.

There was a black cat who was Roxy Hart from Chicago and he wanted to leave so badly his owner had to keep her hand under the skirt area to keep the little guy from fleeing.

Off to the side was the Rock of Ages cats, Tigger and Cody:

And off in the far corner was two cats representing… something with turquoise and argyle. One was a Savannah and he was sleeping and the other was a wee kitten with yellow eyes and he was full of the frisky.

In the library was Tara, the cat that rescued the little boy from the attacking dog. This cat. As I entered the room Tara stalked across the carpet and hid under the tablecloth.

But he best part for me, without a doubt, was when a woman showed up late all flustered and I realized she was wearing two cats, one on her shoulder and one in a baby sling.

I have a weak spot for gray cats so I immediately fell in love with sling-cat whose name, I found out later, is R2D2 because of the wee beeping noises he makes. In addition both these cats are ancient and really shouldn’t have to go through this stupid and humiliating endeavor. Wearing costumes is a young kitty’s game. These elderly fellas should be playing shuffleboard in Florida. But here they were and it was about to get real rough for them.

R2D2 was then dressed as The Phantom of the Opera and Orange Cat Who’s Name I Never Caught was the Phantom’s Angel of Music. Orange Cat seemed moderately tolerant of this but R2D2 immediately went into some kind of sadness trance and stared at, nay, through, the carpet for the next hour. I think he was willing himself to die. People petted him, cameras went off in his face, he didn’t care. He was convincing the Grim Reaper to drop on by and help him shuffle off this mortal coil. I’m a bad person because I may or may not have laughed until tears rolled down my face at the utter pitifulness of R2D2. I’m not proud of that, but it’s the truth.

OH GOD NOT THE MASK HASN’T HE SUFFERED ENOUGH

I didn’t purchase any raffle tickets so The Moomins and I split after we petted all the cats that would let us and munched some cheese. It was a nice experience and I would go again to give funds to a worthy cause but once you’ve seen a bunch of cats in costumes you’re kind of good with that for a long time.

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Thoughts.

Friday, July 25th, 2014

1. There’s a trend right now to have multicolored polygons in advertising and I just want to put it out there that I like it. Every time I see a Samsung Galaxy or pass a Starbucks it brightens my day a little bit. It’s so cheerful and festive. Keep it up, everyone. I WANT HAPPY RAINBOW TRIANGLES EVERYWHERE. IT’S FRIKKIN’ JOYOUS, Y’ALL.

2. For the last three weeks I’ve been avoiding sugar and packaged foods, really just eating fresh vegetables and meat for protein. My body is running like a beautifully oiled machine. My entrails aren’t fighting with me like they usually do, my skin is clear, I lost some weight, all good stuff. And then the universe decided things were going too smoothly and I needed to struggle more, using 7-11 as a conduit for this temptation.

Oh my gosh, that looks delicious. And like it would hurt me from the minute I put it in my mouth until it left my body angrily twenty minutes later. I still want it though. It’s so… orange. There’s crunchy crumbles! And runny cheesy goo! I must have it. Lord, give me strength to avoid the siren call of the loaded Dorito. It’s the work of the devil, I know, but I am weak. I’m only a person!*

3. Occasionally I walk on Broadway to get to and from work. There’s a building that is covered in scaffolding and the scaffolding has different artists’ interpretations of eyes over it. Fine, good, whatever. It’s better than raw nakey scaffolding. However, one of the eyes is clearly that of Michelangelo’s David. I never realized that Michelangelo left a small point of stone in the pupil to give the impression of light hitting the surface of the eye. When seen in situ it’s a brilliant move, but when the eye is seen all on its lonesome it looks like a goat eyeball.

4. Also on Broadway, a pop-up shoe store. It’s selling the usual high heels and boots and the like, so the first few times I walked by I didn’t even notice the freaky shoes.

You see the iridescent and checkerboard shoes? I thought those were sandals on a plastic foot form, but look closer: the laces are on the plastic part. It’s a combination house shoe and clear plastic men’s shoe. Why? Why is this a thing? I can’t imagine your foot would look good in there, all your toes mooshed together and sweaty. Have we run out of ideas for footwear? Has it come to this? I want to speak to the person in charge.

5. Unrelated to my walks around town: this is a phenomenal costume I saw on the internet and I love it. In case you don’t recognize it, it’s Statler and Waldorf from The Muppet Show.

*BTW, I figured out a solution: I take a different route to work so I don’t see the storefront. Problem solved.

Addendum 9/15/14: Cheer is on the rainbow polygon bandwagon and I could not be happier about it.

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Empire State Tattoo Expo.

Monday, June 30th, 2014

A weekend ago there was a tattoo expo a block from my house. Now, I don’t have any tattoos but I love every kind of art and did I mention it was a block from my house? I called up Snorth and off we went to the tattoo expo.

I didn’t take any pictures while I was there because I really wanted to focus on looking at all the displays and I took the risk that everything I saw would be on the internet. Luckily I was right, so all the pictures you see here were pulled off of the artist’s/company’s Facebook pages. We’ve all seen a great many tattoos in our lives and I was bracing myself for some unfortunate artwork. This guy I saw once comes to mind. I don’t think I saw any sub-par work. Every single artist I saw was above-average to out-of-this-world amazing. I could not believe the level of skill I was witnessing. I’m going to talk about three artists in particular, but here’s a quick glance at some of the other artists.

The talent, it was awe-inspiring. The first artist I walked past that knocked me out of my socks was Nathan Mould. He hails from Pittsburgh and his work is mostly black and white geometric using pointillism to create gradations.

He was selling a t-shirt and he could have charged fifty bucks for it, I would have bought it anyway.

Then the next two artists were focusing mainly on the vibrantly colored watercolor technique incorporating a computerized collage feel. I saw Ivana Belakova, originally from Slovakia, now working in L.A. She’s on the right.

I loved that she could tattoo any subject, but always in her very distinct style. You want a car? She does a car.

You want a portrait of your dog? You got it.

Or your kid? No problem.

How about a beet? Now everyone will want a beet. I sure do.

I loved her bird and animal work most, though.

And the last artist I encountered was Justin Nordine (on the left). His studio is presently in Massachusetts. Snorth and I ended up talking to him while he prepared to tattoo a rainbow chameleon on a man’s thigh.

Later when I went to his Facebook page, I saw the drawing of the rainbow chameleon and the finished piece! (No surprise, it came out brilliantly.)

Here are the websites of all these artists. If you want to get something done by them, be prepared to wait several months. They have a long list.

http://www.justinnordine.net/

http://www.ivanatattooart.com/

http://artisanpittsburgh.com/tattoo/nathan-mould/bioportfolio/

While weaving up and down the aisles, I noticed an enormous inflatable something-or-other in the middle area. When we circled back around I realized it was a booth with giant jelly jar of moonshine on top from the Ole Smoky Tennessee Moonshine Company. I found a picture of the booth elsewhere, you’ll need to imagine it in a big open convention hall.

I asked if I could buy a jar and they said no, the law prohibits them from selling the jar. What I could have was a shot. A shot of moonshine. I don’t really drink ever and it was 11:30 in the morning, but when an opportunity presents itself you take it. I was given the choice of original, lemon drop, cherry or charred.

I voted for cherry, hoping that the fruit would mellow the inevitable burn of the 100-proof moonshine.

I said I just wanted a taste, but the nice man poured me about two shots worth and then threw four cherries in. Hoo boy. I sniffed it. It smelled like something you would clean a hospital with.

I took a sip. Have you ever drank poison? I imagine what happened is what would happen if you drank poison. First, my chest got all warm on the inside and my left eyelid decided to close. It was done for the day. Then I ate a cherry. My nose-bridge began sweating and my tongue went numb. All I could taste was metal. I am not exaggerating. Snorth was watching me, she can attest to all of this. I politely handed my still-full cup back to the nice man, said thank you as best as I could with my tongue (“thakkoo”) and tried to continue on my way. I turned to talk to Snorth and she said, “Yeah, you reek of rubbing alcohol.” Fumes were coming off of me. But now I can say I’ve tried moonshine. Another thing on my list of things to impress youngsters. “Gather ’round children, lemme tell you about the time I tried NyQuil-flavored-propane.”

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Artists that be brangin’ it.

Tuesday, May 13th, 2014

First, spam. When I was twelve I saw Monty Python and the Holy Grail for the first time and it had a great effect on me. So when I received this stellar piece of spammery:

All I could think of was this scene from MP and the HG.

http://youtu.be/LJfowXTXOfU?t=38s

Okay, artists that are amazing and have come into my orbit recently. There’s Jeremy Fish’s new work. I’ve blogged about Jeremy Fish before. I love his work so much I made a signed poster he made the centerpiece of my living room wall. Well, I just saw some of his newer work and it’s really great. I love how he is evolving without giving up his signature style.

And there’s Cody Eich the tattoo artist. I adore his colors and his nature themes. If I could commit to a tattoo design, it would most likely be one like his.

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Television I have recently stuffed in my brain.

Tuesday, April 29th, 2014

There’s some good TV out there right now, much of it streaming. Now when I come home instead of flicking betwixt two sub-par programs (Giant River Fish! Dwarves Having Dwarf Babies! Serial Killers’ Favorite Lunch Meats!) I now am delighted to snorf down something of quality. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of bad television out there. With good there is always bad. It just seems like the scales are tipped more in the favor of good for once. I’m going to run through everything I’ve watched recently. Before I get to TV series, I would like to recommend the episode of Nature, the show on PBS, that was on the Japanese snow monkeys. There is one path into the area, and I took this photo on that path:

In the documentary, you will see the same shot. Not similar kind-of-sort-of. Identical. It’s funny. Also, the episode spawned one of my favorite animated gifs of late called “Mmmmmmnope.”

Okay. TV show reviews.

1. House of Cards on Netflix. I’ve only seen the first season, but it’s very good. Really good. Like a dirty grimy West Wing. It’s beautifully filmed and it makes Washington D.C. look like a bizarre Wizard of Oz-type place. There’s intrigue and plotting plotting plotting, I find it totally engrossing. Robin Wright’s costumes are fierce every damn time. She is not a spring chicken (though she takes impeccable care of herself) but she manages to look amazing every time she’s on-screen. It’s nice to see the girl from The Princess Bride portraying the sexiest shark in town. My only problem with the show is the woman who plays the President’s Chief of Staff is supposed to be Cuban-American, but she’s clearly South Asian, like Indian or Pakistani, and she has a tinge of an accent from there. Seriously? This is America. We have a gazillion Latin people, I bet some of them are women and might be actors. We couldn’t hire one of them? It’s a little thing, but I find it sometimes takes me out of the action. Other than that, super-great show.

2. True Detective on HBO*. Oh my God. I’ve watched this series twice and I may watch it again just for kicks. It’s like a series of oil paintings in a row that take you on a journey. The main stars are Woody Harrelson and Matthew MacConaughey. My initial reaction was, “I had no idea those two stoners could act so well.” They are magnificent. I’ve never been on the MacConaughey train during all those rom-coms he starred in. I mean, I could see he was handsome, but I didn’t really care. Guess what? I care now. He done acted the hell out of his character. His character is GLOOMY. I mean, bad things have happened to him so he has every right, but still, wow, pessimist is an understatement. Here’s a disturbing thing I discovered: If you watch True Detective and Rust Cohle (MacConaughey’s character) goes into one of his down-in-the-dumps speeches, you should think, “What a looney-basket spouting crazy thoughts.” That is the correct response. That means you are healthy and well in the head. Here’s an example of one.

“I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self-aware, nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself, we are creatures that should not exist by natural law. We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self; an accretion of sensory, experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody is nobody. Maybe the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight – brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal.”

I not only understood everything Rust Cohle said in the entire series, I agreed with him. Entirely. Ohhhhh dear. That’s not good. I feel like that should be on a psych eval (“Do you understand and agree with everything Rust Cohle says?”) and if you say yes you don’t get to be a police officer or elementary school teacher or whatever.

Final thoughts: the baddie at the end is scary as hell and gets scarier the more times you watch him. Ugh, he is the mayor of Creepytown. The actor said he would go home and cry after shooting his scenes because he had to think like his character thinks and he didn’t want to. That’s a bad bad villain.

3. Sons of Anarchy on FX. Such high hopes for that. I know several people who like that show. I started watching it and I was totally into it. The actors are great, but either your show is based in reality or it’s not. I’ll explain. In the pilot episode of the show a preemie baby is born and is in the NICU. And then over the next six or seven episodes, like, thirty characters die. No joke. Seriously. Bodies droppin’ everywhere. At that point the lead actor says, “I’m excited to take my son home, he’s been in the hospital for a month.” So I am to understand that in the time period of a month in a not-especially populous area of California tens of people have died in violent ways, including an FBI investigator, and everything is running as usual? I don’t care how many cops you have on your payroll, someone somewhere is going to notice that. This is not the favelas of Brazil. Then the hardships keep coming at a rate that prevented me from suspending my disbelief any further, so in the middle of Season 3 I politely bowed out. This character gets blown up and this other character gets raped and this guy’s wife is shot and on and on every episode… Too much. I can’t no more.

4. Rick and Morty on Adult Swim (Cartoon Network). Weird. That show is weird. I really like it though. You remember back in the 90s before the internet there wasn’t a whole lot of weird television made available. You pretty much had Liquid TV on MTV and that’s it. I ate that kind of stuff up. I didn’t necessarily like all of it, but I loved that it was being made. One of the shows being made at that time was The Maxx. I adored that show. If you watch it now it seems kind of dated, but I had never seen anything like that. And I get that same feeling from Rick and Morty. It’s bizarre and fun and involves going to different planets and alternate dimensions. Here, watch the opening credits (the music is a clear homage / ripoff of Dr. Who):

http://video.adultswim.com/rick-and-morty/theme-song.html

The first season just ended, so when it (hopefully) shows up on streaming Netflix and you need some oddness in your life, check it out.

5. The League on FX. I don’t care about football, and I extra-super-duper don’t care about fantasy football. However, the cast of this show makes it a jolly good show. They are all immature dorks wearing adult-man suits (and one woman, but she’s kind of token) who are all professional stand-up comedians and actors in real life, so they improv their lines a great deal and it’s awesome. There’s a quick-wit quality you get from The League that I don’t think you get from a totally scripted show. And while many of the plot lines relate to football, many of the plot lines relate to personal events going on in the main character’s lives, so I can still follow along. I’ve watched all the seasons and I shall continue watching despite my complete ignorance of who’s a running back or wide receiver or kicker.

*Alternate title: Matthew MacConaughey Smokes All The Cigarettes In The World Ever.

Addendum – May 12th: I forgot to include Shameless and Oz. Shameless is on Showtime and it is crazy. I cannot figure out for the life of me how they got this show made. It’s about a family living in a poor neighborhood in Chicago and it… there are children on this show. Children. I have watched scenes where these children see a profoundly naked homeless man, their mother who has slit her wrists due to bi-polar disorder, drugs and sex and stealing and oh my God, how are these child actors dealing with this? From this description it sounds like the show is a debbie-downer but it is not. It mainly revolves around how all these people are keeping their head up and making their own lives through the hardships that come upon them, and the show’s damn funny. I highly recommend it but under no circumstances should you watch it with children or the elderly unless you want to explain things to them. Here’s the opening credits to give you an idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JyB6Bu3gsI

And here’s a brief overview with the cast.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K8Ug-EHivc

Oz on HBO. This show is pushing twenty years old but I never saw it. Snorth recommended that I check it out and now I’m two seasons in. I do not want to go to prison. No no. Not that I wanted to before, but now, I totally do not want to go to prison. People are really really mean there. It’s a great show, kind of dated by today’s standards of television-making, but thoroughly engrossing. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much male nudity on a show. I really pleased by that, not because I have a penchant for male jingly-jangly, but we are constantly seeing ladybits on television nowadays and I like that this attempts to even that out a bit. And I like that they aren’t afraid to kill off some characters and introduce new ones. It keeps it feeling fresh.

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