everybody draw!

So yesterday I was in a drawing class for about 15 minutes. I was hoping I would be able to squeeze into the already full class, but when the instructor came in she gave some little spiel about how she can only teach 20 kids and the class had 23 and for some reason there was 26 in the room. So when she went to make some copies I snuck out.

I haven't taken a drawing class in a long time. Hell, I haven't taken a hands-on art class in a long time, not since high school. Frankly, drawing is the only art class I have interest in taking anymore, because drawing is awesome. Painting is highly overrated, and design has become a computer-dominated market. The best designer in the world today? Photoshop!

"Art classes bored me with such projects as making linoleum cuts or doing watercolors of flowers. What I really wanted to do was draw." -Charles Schulz

And Mr. Schulz was right. Art classes suck. Fortunately for him, in his day they offered illustration classes in high school, a concept which probably would have put me in my rightful place if it still existed today. But alas, in high school drawing classes they just have you do a bunch of still lifes. 'Draw this watering can, then draw the person next to you, then draw something else with dynamic shading. Maybe then you'll be ready to start painting, or better yet, take a shop class so you can get a real job someday.'

A lot of you people know I like to draw cartoons, but let me introduce you to some of my favorite cartoonists working today:

Bruce Eric Kaplan - He draws cartoons for The New Yorker, and he's also a co-producer of the show Six Feet Under. Before that, he was a writer for Seinfeld. I like his cartoons because not only are they clever, but the art itself is interesting. He likes to have a lot of negative space. Plus, he still does cartoons by hand, which is great.

David Rees - To my understanding he contributes cartoons to Rolling Stone, but I know him because of his books and his website. When I discovered his book My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable at the OSU bookstore I felt like telling everybody there to buy it. It does bother me that a lot of cartoonists these days just use computers, but Rees and a few others, which are also on this list, are really making great stuff. Oh yeah; this guy has a new book. Check it out.

Friend Bear! - I don't know the name of the guy, but he makes the best web-cartoons around. And the site is so addicting thanks to the random cartoon button.

Max Cannon - Red Meat is a great comic. That's all I have to say.

Then there are all my old favorites, like Schulz and Thurber and Watterson and Larson and Barsotti. Wait, Larson still makes cartoons, doesn't he? Anyway...

In a related story, I am going to submit some of my stuff to the OSU's newspaper The Barometer. We'll see if they get the joke.

"Don't you lay a bullet on those martians."

Classes and such begin again. That's all I will say about that.

Yesterday was a good day, full of things. Captain A and the Sounds of B took some fantastic pictures for a website that y'all may be seeing soon. Then myself and the Andy made a movie about martians and Snake Eyeses, and a short feature about what the moon astronauts will do all day (featuring me in a helmet).

And last night I saw Liars at the WOW Hall, a band which became one of my very favorites when I saw them perform two years ago. Since then they have lost their bassist and replaced their drummer, and actually sound quite different, but not in a bad way. They're still just a group of guys making great noisy noise. I was also pleased to read that their new album is a concept album about witch folklore, and I love concept albums. I was further pleased to read that lead singer Angus was somewhat inspired by the sounds of Matmos, an electronic group I enjoy, while he was hanging around on the Bjork tour. And I was even further pleased by this quote from Angus about the band's evolution: "It's not like the next record is going to be scary and weird...We could easily make a Japanese pop record next time." I love how everything in my music world ties together so well.
After last night's show I shook Angus's hand and then talked about the city of Eugene with Aaron the guitarist, Chad, some guy in a grey sweatshirt, and a guy who called himself "black unicorn". Yes, we all laughed at him.

"It's called master exploder!"

I finally managed to upload Noah was a Trackstar on my music page. My computer's connection capabilities still SUCK, and I still have no idea why, but I did that. Actually, I had a whole post written today about ice cream bike vendors with megaphones, but when I went to post it - gasp! - my connection up and died. AGAIN. So that post is gone forever.

In other news, I saw School of Rock over the weekend. If you haven't seen it, I recommend renting the Digital Video Disc. If you do that, I further recommend watching the bonus video diary of Jack Black, as well as his plead to Led Zeppelin. Good stuff, that.

finals over.

I thought I'd write about eye-glasses today, and how I love them. I do not wear any kind of prescription glasses, but I've always wanted at least a pair of reading glasses that I could put on every now and then when I wanted to change my look.

Why do I love glasses? I don't know. I guess because they carry so much background. They can be interpreted so many ways, and leave so many different impressions. A pair of glasses can completely alter how someone looks, and change how others percieve them. Just look at Superman - he puts on a pair of glasses and immediately he transforms from a dashing, extroverted hero into a sensitive, introverted businessman.

Glasses have as much subconscious image power as a cigarette, but most would assume that the two have the opposite effect. So what happens when you mix the two seemingly polar symbols? You get the "Luke Wardlaw", a style that is soft-spoken and intelligent yet sharp and rebellious. I recall the image of Max Fischer from Rushmore when he becomes depressed and isolated. His glasses retain the nerdy, attempted-overachiever look, but that look is bent by the cigarette into the image of a nerdy, attempted over-achiever who has been slugged by life.

But I'm not promoting cigarettes here. I'm promoting the glasses. Part of what makes them great is that you can mix them with different fashions and styles and create something new. Take Elvis Costello: put glasses on punk and you get new wave (or use goggles if you're Mark Mothersbaugh). Tom Cruise wore those stylish frames in the first Mission Impossible, and they somehow made him more of a badass. Just imagine, readers at home, putting glasses on a cowboy, or a commando, or a spaceman, or a boxer...which may be a tad unrealistic, but it's still interesting!

Glasses were integral to Elton John's early rock persona, and apparently he actually became nearsighted as a result of wearing his reading glasses too often. I read that he started wearing glasses because he wanted to be like Buddy Holly, whose trademark was his specs and who once told his mother "If people are going to like me, they’re going to have to like me with my glasses on."

Girls look great in glasses. A pair of glasses can give a beautiful girl a sense of modesty, and a charm that comes from a sense of hidden beauty (which isn't really hidden at all- it's just the slight extra prominence given to the girl's eyes). Two of the girls I've dated have worn glasses; another one had a pair of reading glasses, and I literally did a backflip when I found out, but she refused to wear them. When will modern women learn to reject the standards of beauty and love their glasses? I do!

Maybe this post has given those of you who wear glasses a little self-esteem boost, and good for that. As for standard news, my finals are finished and my spring break has officially begun. Not that I have any spans. ...That is a genuine misspelling of 'plans'. .... ..I have nothing more to say.

computers are the worst way to access the internet.

Captain A and the Sounds of B have a new supplemental song that we recorded over the weekend, but I cannot upload it because my modem has become quite catatonic. I didn't know it was possible for modems to simply get old and stop working properly, but that seems to be the problem; if it were something else, I'm SURE my user-friendly PC would let me know, right? Right???

Anyway, as soon as (if) I get it uploaded I will post word.

finals continue.

"Let's go get some tacos."

Last night I watched The Doors with Jose. I doubt the movie would have been anything if Oliver stone hadn't been behind it. Because only Oliver Stone could do that desert sequence, and that desert sequence makes the movie. "Ride the snake."

The weather is nice. Guys wearing flip flops break out the frisbees on the library lawn and see how close they can come to wacking some passerby (me) in the face with them. Yetsreday...yes, yetsreday I saw a couple guys playing a paddle-ball game. Each guy had a big wooden paddle, and they smacked a rubber ball back and forth. You can't get much simpler than that.

Sorry I haven't put up any music for a while. I've been busy with this damn thing called school, and I haven't been having a lot of grand ideas lately. Once I create something that I feel is "single" material, I'll put it up for your consumption.

"the camel that stroke the baw's rack."

That title is something I said today in an attempt to say "straw that broke the camel's back." I corrected myself by saying "I mean the camel that broke the straw's back." I was still laughing after everyone else had stopped.

Finals approach. Some are already here. Tomorrow I have my Japanese oral final, and I think my body has been conditioned to react in a negative way for the 48 hours surrounding the 5-minute conversation. And people wonder why my hair is thinning.

I am thinking of creating a children's book, something about a knight and a dragon and Jesus. Then I'll publish it and get a Caldecott medal. I love children's books, especially ones written by children. I think I talked about this before. But yes, that whole area is my main source inspiration.
Speaking of inspiration, there was a great art exhibit at OSU's Fairbanks hall this past month. I just caught its last day yesterday; Kay French had a series entitled "the plants of paradise", and it was a bunch of field drawings of plants and insects with random lists of numbers, symbols and stamps stuck on the canvases, which were painted in soft blue, brown and green color fields. The artist had written about how it was all inspired by early 20th-century field manuals, and that she was attempting to find the aesthetic of some ideal, utopian garden. I just thought it was a great combination of technical, commercial and fine art. I think technical art, diagrams and graphs and such, has a lot of potential in the fine art world, and it was good to see an artist play with that idea. Unfortunately I couldn't find anything about Kay French on the web, but I did find this:


Mars missions can wait.

familiarity in place of comprehension theory.

Here is an interesting site: blather

Some kind of experiment with random words and random text and journal entries. I don't understand it, but that's what makes it great. The best sites are the one's I don't quite understand, like Futura 2000's (see if you can find the page all about Boba Fett). This also goes for movies, books, music, and people. The key is to not get discouraged with not understanding. It is instinct to simply back out of something you do not understand, but if you continue to expose yourself to the website or thing and continue to explore it you find an understanding of not understanding. Your exposure to it brings a sense of familiarity which replaces the need to understand. You understand its ever-changing potential for interpretation. Now go click the links.

"why wouldn't you do it that way?"

Last Saturday I attended a music show in Eugene by Deerhoof. It was a very healthy experience for me. I haven't been going to any concerts recently because, simply, there aren't many good bands around nowadays. At least, no one I have a desire to see. I heard about Deerhoof sometime last year and downloaded some of their work and I was very pleased as punch with their sound, so when I saw that they were coming to town I decided they would be worth seeing.

Deerhoof have given me hope for rock and roll. Naturally I couldn't fully appreciate what they were trying to do until I saw them do it right before my eyes, but now I understand their significance. Behind the bloated alternative rock scene inhabited by bands like Jet and The Darkness, Deerhoof is taking the destructiveness of bands like Lightning Bolt and Arab on Radar, replacing the nihilism with a sense of melody, and replacing the screams with softly-sung, abstract children's book poetry.

This is what needs to be done! Rock and roll must be destroyed and reassembled to be saved!! Change tempo and tune mid-song! Let the drummer bang away as if he were a jazz drummer seeking a heart attack! Replace the archetypal rock and roll singer with a tiny, childish Japanese woman who comes off as the Yoda to Karen O's Luke Skywalker! Write lyrics about bugs and pandas rather than sex and drugs!

On a completely unrelated note, I am ill this week. It's not fun.

I haven't posted since last Tuesday, which is a long time. I been busy. I don't have time to write anything right now, either. But I do have things to address, so stay tuned.

Until then, I give you nano guitar.