Friday, December 28, 2007

Mick Wakes Up


O Lucky Man (Warner Home Video)
Speaking of Candide... The middle installment of Lindsay Anderson's Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell) trilogy is a sprawling Bildungsroman for the blown minds and crushed blossoms of 1973, featuring a great, brilliantly integrated soundtrack by Alan Price and a remarkable balance of dreamlike mythic recursivity and incisive (and sadly still relevant) political satire. Sometimes self-indulgence is just the ticket. Finally out on bargain-priced double DVD!

Accidentally left off the published version of my list of the 'Best Cultural Artifacts of 2007 that I Can Remember' - it goes right after the entry on the Jimbo doll.

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Seasoning Unto You


"You may order your pastels from Alaska,
Imported, as the Igloo, in review"
- Evelyn Christmas (songpoem, Vol 2 track 4)

Download Outsider XMAS Vol 1
Download Outsider XMAS Vol 2

Tracklists in Comments

Sunday, December 23, 2007

A Washington Post Two



While I'm linking to youtube, I've been meaning to follow up my post regarding my cinematic foray to Long Beach last April by linking to the completed short film Mimesis. I wish they'd used the part where George is doing the frug, but you can't talk to these people. I also noticed that the enhance your calm link was leading to the wrong material, so I fixed it. Next project Dr. Shantibugs? George W and John Spartan have much in common!

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Let's Paint Mannlicher Carcano's Portrait


Mannlicher Carcano's appearance on John Kilduff's public access instructional painting program 'Let's Paint TV' on Youtube. The band in this incarnation includes (L to R) Christ's Cumming II, Herr Schurdt, Really Happening, & Gogo Godot.

I hate how these embedded videos slow down the page loading, so I'll just provide a screen shot and links, OK?

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Can't Get There from Here


"What is the point of making art? I worked at a Montessori daycare one summer, and there was this one kid who — when other entertainments weren’t forthcoming — would endlessly recite a schizophrenic Zen vaudeville routine of his own precocious concoction, to wit: “Why did the chicken cross the road? I don’t know Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Why did the chicken cross the road? I don’t know Ha ha...” The Art World has yet to arrive at this level of sublime denial, but it’s mostly due to the enormous quantity of multiple personalities duking it out — or more often avoiding the issue. In a fashion culture driven by planned obsolescence and amnesia, there’s no place for consensus — except maybe the one that suggests nobody push the question too far, at the risk of queering a good thing for everybody. It’s sort of a microcosm thing."


Continued, eventually getting around to Linda Stark's Potion Paintings, here.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Shortage of Fats Imperils Nation at War! Do Your Bit!


If the lure of XMAS salvage (now including guest sub-curator Jodi Wille of Process Media presenting previously unscreened video of local glam evangelist Miss Velma and the SOURCE Family’s Hawaiian Christmas special!!!) is not enough to get you to Echo Park this Saturday night, consider the synergistic possibilities of this:

Fry-B-Q 3, Wrath of Fry-B-Q
Saturday Dec 15, 7:00pm-10:00pm
Free Admission/$5 all you can fry

Machine Project
1200 D North Alvarado
Los Angeles, CA, 90026
213-483-8761

Here’s what you do…

1) Arrive between 7 - 10 pm Saturday Dec 15th.

2) Bring something edible to fry. Machine's trained fryolater technicians will be standing by, eager to batter and fatify your soon to be delicious snacks. Machine's extensive testing suggests that almost any item will bring great fried satisfaction - potatoes, fish, vegetables, onions, twinkies, etc. Just in case Machine bought extra fire extinguishers.

3) Bring checks small and large and become a friend of Machine Project. Your donation helps Machine keep doing what Machine does, and is fully tax deductible. Details on Machine's support page

The secret bar (accessible through a stabilized rift in the time/space continuum) will be open.

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Southland Skintasia

I'm a little late promoting this year's 'Skin' themed Pasadena Art & Ideas Festival, but many of the related shows are still up, and you can still get the catalog containing the rest of this essay.


From it’s origins in Otzi the Iceman’s elegant geometric inkage and the Paleolithic inverse spray-paint hand-prints of Chauvet Cave (not to mention the Venus of Willendorf - if only for square footage! Va-va-Voom!) art has been inextricably intermingled with the 5 layers of the upper integument. Underlying this seemingly fundamental use of epidermis as canvas is a radical semiotic event: skin inversely branded onto symbol, what “thought-stylist” R. Gros-Tumore has referred to as “OOTAT culture.” “The decision to deliberately mark the body,” claims Gros-Tumore “is the very Genesis-spot of Art, the point where abstraction of and alienation from the totally physiomatic Self is first materially recorded, to the best of our knowledge. It is, in fact, the opposite of branding; it is the ground zero of individuation.”

Whether or not the very origins of artmaking are to be found in this prehistoric moment of self-objectification, skin -- as a subject, metaphor, and even medium – has undeniably been a major recurring theme throughout art history. Along with three-point linear perspective and anatomical verisimilitude, the convincing depiction of skin was (and remains) one of the holy grails of pictorial illusionism, the dominant criterion of significant and successful art until the Modern era. Nor would this be a concern were it not for the peculiar exception granted the Fine Arts from various codes of prudery over the centuries, resulting both in countless Renaissance Classicist and Neoclassical depictions of nude Greek goddesses and equally abundant early 20th century mail-order pulp booklets of “Nude artist’s model” photography.

Saturday, December 1, 2007

Solutions to You

More posts soon I swear to god. In the meantime, take comfort in the inspirational thought-stylings of Dethklok leader Nathan Explosion:



Update: First my nephews never get their talking Towelly dolls and now this? Screw you Cartoon Network! So 20th century. Here's a transcription:

Nathan: [reading the scripted commencement speech] Harvard... solutions... solutions to you...
Ofdensen: [whispers] Salutations!
Nathan: [tossing the speech aside] I don't need this stupid speech! (looking out at the graduates) You think you're smart huh? Think you can come up here and take a piece of this? Huh? Any of you? You? You? Listen, Harvard. I'm a billionaire. And most of you are gonna graduate and move back in with your parents! I'm gonna tell you somethin', though. We have something in common: we're all gonna die. No matter whatcha' do. No matter whatcha' do with your lives, you're dead! You're dead! You're dying. You're gonna die. All of you. Dead. You, dead. You, dead. All of you. You, lady? Your tits will be eaten by maggots. In just a few short years. So here's my message. My message to you. A very simple message: Go forth. Go forth, and DIIIIIE!

OK, here's the official site's version. You should just never buy anything by the company whose ad you have to sit through to get to the actual video. UPDATE 2020: OK now you don't have to watch the ad. Does Cartoon Network even still exist?