CRIME DOES NOT PAY

KING KONG WEDDING CAKE

It's a King Kong Wedding Cake.

AN EASY ONE

I thought I would draw a picture of a clown only put a jumping spider face instead of the clown face.  So I did. And this is it.  The thing about jumping spiders is their big round eyes make them seem kind of sweet, except that there are too many of them.  No, s/he is not going to eat that bunny.  They are friends.

DRILL, BABY, DRILL

Eons ago, before the dawn of time, I drew a minicomic in which an oil rig drilled down and woke up a giant monster sleeping in the earth. A good idea if not super original.  I decided to draw a picture of that idea again, and a giant baby was the most horrible monster I could think of.  I also thought it would be funny if it was about to get poked in the butt.  So that is all there is to that idea.  Any sociopolitical or socioecological interepretations you would like to apply to this are what is in your head, not mine.

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION

This year I resolve to try to do more things wrong.

(You ought to know by now to click on the image 

to view a larger size.)

JUST FOR FUN

Just for fun, here is the sketch I used for the drawing posted below.  I tried to do it directly in MyPaint but finally had to do this two inch high sketch and scan it to get it the way I wanted.

WISHING YOU A TIDY BOXING DAY

Please let me know which version you prefer, and why.

I HAVE A CHRISTMAS WISH TOO

Yesterday, having made an apple pie and working on my quilt, I listened to a motivational CD as I stitched, like any reasonable all-american housewife should on christmas eve.  Even if they are a mean old man like me.  One thing about quilting is that you think about other things as you do it, and the years drifted away as they seem to like to do in this joyous time of year.  I found myself recalling the days when I sat around the coffee table with my friend Torger, smoking pot, making art, and listening to the craziest records we could find at the Fort Collins Colorado Salvation Army store.  We often listened to preachin' records like Jimmy Swaggart or Jim Bakker, enjoying the music of their voices and the unintentional hilarity of their words, or motivational and success records with deep manly voices instilling us with the urge to at least wish we felt like achieving great things maybe someday.  One of the finest treasures we enjoyed was Earl Nightingale's phonograph recording of his essay "The Strangest Secret."  The best moment of the recording, and possibly the best moment of all the time we spent together, was when Mr. Nightingale said to us in his luscious announcer voice, "The SUCCESSFUL MAN, is the one who is DOING WHAT HE WANTS TO DO, BECAUSE HE WANTS TO DO IT."  We sat on the ratty carpet around a table full of art supplies, with a wall of art books on one side and a wall of science fiction magazines on the other side, high on dope, and looked at each other and said, well okay, we made it!  That is the day I truly gave up trying. Now I come to think of it I don't really have a Christmas wish after all.  It's a good story though.  Just remember to give up early enough in life that you can enjoy it.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Trillions of microscopic godzillas live unknown

in the dust beneath our feet.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

MOVIES

 Since my primary source for illegally downloaded movies has gone freeleech (just look it up) for the holiday season I am jamming my folders with stuff I can't remember why I bookmarked months ago.  I was temporarily trying to uplift myself and watch a higher quality of film but that mostly just makes me want to plunge eyes-deep back into the crap that I find so soothing. First I have to make it through my backlog of  stuff I have had around for weeks, such as Polanski's Cul-de-Sac (1966) which I saw a few days ago and it is a very good movie of its type - a "one-set play" sort of thing where a bunch of people end up in the same place for one day and bring everything crashing down.  I guess I have seen about half of Polanski's works now and usually enjoy them - I thought Ghost Writer was great.  Yesterday I tried to watch The Adjustment Bureau for educational purposes but about halfway through I decided I didn't care if those two people defied the damn universe to be together because she was kind of a dick and he was kind of a pussy.  Then I tried to watch a Polish film, Angelus (2000) directed by Lech Majewski, which seemed to have potential with some offbeat mystical content in its depiction of an imaginary rosicrucian art cult among miners in communist Poland, but it is a bit abstract and broken into hundreds of brief vignettes and was not really compelling, story-wise.  Least unsatisfactory of the day and the one I made it all the way through was the stupidest and least coherent one, Gildersleeve's Ghost (1944).  I make a sort of a hobby out of seeing movies spun-off of radio shows and they are for the most part sub-par.  The Lum and Abner movies make it to just about par most of the time but I'll tell you the Fibber McGee and Molly movie Heavenly Days (also 1944) was just a big mess.  So is Gildersleeve's Ghost, but at least it was a palatable mess.  I have never cared much for the Great Gildersleeve radio program - I thought his 1950 program The Harold Peary Show much more entertaining.  Gildersleeve's Ghost begins with Peary in a double role as two of his ancestors who rise from the grave one stormy night, determined to help him win the election for police commissioner.  They do this by releasing the caged gorilla from the basement of the old dark house where a mad scientist is working on his invisibility experiments.  Then they vanish from the movie. Naturally everyone ends up in the old dark house on that stormy night, along with a gorilla suit in addition to the "actual" gorilla, a French Maid, an Invisible Woman, and a Negro Chauffeur.  How can you go wrong with those plot elements?  Also making an appearance is Jack Norton, drunk as usual.  It seems he appeared as a drunk more than 70 times.

COWBOY HANUKKAH

Wishin' you and your'n a wild and wooly Hanukkah!

The Quilt that Nearly Ended My Career

I figured the only way to get over my feelings of utter worthlessness was to do something difficult that I didn't really want to do.  So I got out this quilt.

I don't know how many quilts I have made.  Ten at least.  This is a pretty good example of them.  They are manly quilts, mostly solid colors with strong geometrical patterns, mostly salvaged from men's shirts and pants.  I enjoy the purely geometric design process and I like doing something this big, and something that will actually be useful, not just a picture you look at.  I sleep under one or two of my quilts every night.  This one, though, nearly did me in.  Sometimes I use store bought batting, a cottony layer to put between the top and bottom layers of fabric, and sometimes I just use an old blanket.  The blanket I tried to use for this one was way too thick and springy.  I should have stopped as soon as I thought there might be trouble, but I kept going in the belief that it would all even out and look okay in the end.  By the time I got it 90% done I realized I could either take it all apart or just throw it away.  So I took my seam ripper and cut all the stitches holding the layers together and threw away that stupid blanket.  The thought of going over both the top and bottom pieces of the quilt and picking out threads for hours took all the heart out of me.  I had another top finished and a package of batting, but I didn't feel like I could do anything with it so I packed all my quilting supplies away under the table in the corner of my studio and left them there.  I don't even know how many years ago that was.  I thought I would either quilt again someday or I wouldn't.  Looks like I am. I sat for about five hours picking threads out with tweezers.  Part of the time I listened to an L. Ron Hubbard audiobook my friend Jim gave me and it was even more atrocious than I expected.  Dreadful stuff.  This is a pretty good pattern.  The red sashing between the blocks is kind of a fuzzy flannel which contrasts nicely with the smooth cotton twill, and the back is wooly plaid with a constrasting orange stripe across one end.  I like the colors, and it should be a pretty good quilt when I get it done.

ART OF POETRY

Should a Painter take a Fancy to join a Horse's Neck to a human Head, and lay it over with Feathers of various Fowls, uniting together Limbs of every Animal, so as to make what resembles a comely Woman above, terminate vilely in a hideous Fish; could you, my Friends, forbear laughing, if admitted to see this motely Piece?  ... Painters and Poets, you'll say, have always had equal Liberty of attempting any bold Design - We know it, and this Privilege we ask and give in our Turn:  But not that Things incoherent be united, the Merciless associate with the Mild, Serpents be match'd with Doves, Lambs with Tygers. 

- Q. Horatius Flaccus c. 18BCE

WHEN MONKEYS PRAY