On the behalf of the entire television viewing community, I would like to thank HBO productions for (perhaps the first time in it’s history) taking the high road and not showing us Paul Giomatti’s ass during a brief yet enthusiastic love scene between John and Abagail Adams during the “John Adams” mini series. Prior to viewing it I had read a synopsis of episode four and was bracing myself for the inevitable eye load of doughy, Founding Father ham but it never materialized. I don’t think I’ve ever seen four episodes of anything on HBO without some full frontal nudity creeping in. If ever a series called for modesty it would be this one. Then again it’s only half over. If they do show someones butt I pray it isn’t Ben Franklin or George Washington. Thomas Jefferson, maybe, but that’s about it.
I’m getting these new fish down. This one is my favorite. Here’s the link.
Don’t forget to read TODAY’s FORTUNE.
Of course it is still snowing here. We’re getting 6-8″ today. Earlier in the week it was sunny and 40 degrees. A lot of snow melted so I went for a walk with Bob Foster to the Chazen Museum to check out the UW faculty art show and whatever else was around. I didn’t attend the U so I’m not a big follower of faculty art or anything. I do like seeing what people are up to but mostly I just wanted to get out of the studio and walk somewhere…anywhere. Being inside all the time is getting really, really old.
It wasn’t a particularly interesting show but there was some good stuff. And on the way home I got a picture of a lone shoe for my photos of lone shoes collection.
Bob pointed out that the art world has been staring at it’s navel for a long time. I think that’s a fact.
Don and I started watching that HBO series about John Adams. It’s pretty good. I can’t get over how much Adam’s second youngest child looks like that kid in “The Shining”. That helps, because we watch everything Mystery Science Theater style, adding movie references and smart-ass comments to the dialogue whenever possible. So that’s fun. Also fun, for me anyway, is observing old-timey habits and adopting them as my own. As an homage to the Continental Congress, we’ve decided to adopt cane thumping (that is, thumping the end of your cane on the wooden floor in lieu of applause or whatever) as Lost School’s official expression of agreement or appreciation. Already we’ve stashed three canes in my work area. We intend to whip them out and thump them against the floor the next time Bob Foster says something pithy (like that comment about the art world). We know Bob is watching the series and this reference will make him laugh. This is how we amuse ourselves here during the bleak months.
Filed under: Bloggidy Blog | Tags: accordion, bob foster, cheese, magic putty, newport state park, poptarts
This mannequin scared the bejesus out of me this morning. I’m in our basement almost never and I totally forgot it was down there…or that it had hair…or that it’s hand is positioned so it’s reaching out to you. Also, I had occasion to see the movie Disturbia the other day. It wasn’t super-duper scary but it had a bodies in the basement theme. It also had a male protagonist who for a portion of the film wore his pants belted just below his ass. I’ve seen people on COPS try to run with their pants down low like that and it never ends well for them. By the time this guy was running away from the inevitable attacker he changed his clothes so the low pants didn’t really impact the movie in any way. Anyway, the bodies in the basement part flashed into mind when I saw the mannequin. It’s creeping me out even now. Not so much the low pants anymore.
So last night I was hanging out with Don and Bob Foster when around midnight the power went out all over the neighborhood. I can’t tell you how happy I am that we learned it was a widespread outage before someone, perhaps me, ventured into the basement to check the box and happened upon that mannequin. That would have given me fits, I think.
It was up to us to make our own fun while the power was off. Me and Bob ate cheese while Don played the accordion. Here’s a picture of me and Bob eating cheese
and here’s a picture of Don playing the accordion
The flash on the new, new tiny camera works really well. It was dark in that room. Turns out we don’t own any candles. Bad time to find that out. I figured out that I could locomote in the dark fairly successfully if I used my camera to take a picture of whatever was in front of me as I walked. Not much else to do after you run out of cheese and there’s still no electricity.
Filed under: Bloggidy Blog | Tags: dental hygene, Dr. Taco, filmstrips, mojitos
Still I have pictures from Mexico. Rather than letting them continue to gather dust in the image host I shall post them now.
Signage is so regulated in Madison. You’re not even supposed to use sandwich boards out on the sidewalk. In Mexico (and practically everywhere else except Madison) signs are wild and free. Some are there to entertain like this Dr. Taco sign. If you want, you can pretend that you are the giant shrimp! Who wouldn’t? We did but the employees of Dr. Taco were too busy to assist.
Don’t you love Dr. Taco? When I first heard of him I imagined that he would be a human sized taco dressed up like a doctor. That concept still makes more sense to me than the one of an actual doctor (who looks a lot like Einstein) who carries a large taco in lieu of a medical bag and has a giant prawn as a sidekick. But nevermind any of that! Dr. Taco is great just the way he is. And this sign is great.
I found another great sign in an aviary near the hotel:
This brilliant graphic warns against removing plumage from the area. Substitute the bird shape with…well, almost anything and you could have a more all purpose warning advising American tourists just keep their hands off of things. I bet that’s a problem, too, what with all of the cheap booze and the over the counter Vicodin.
There were a lot of anthropomorphic character signs in Mexico.
I love stuff like this. This particular tooth reminds me of a tooth my mom drew a LONG time ago. She used to make filmstrips for VEC Industries. Remember filmstrips? Remember phones that you had to crank to make them go? They are practically contemporaries of one another. Anyway, way back when, my mom illustrated a film strip about dental hygiene. It starred an anthropomorphic tooth named Flory Fluoride. Flory looked like this tooth except he wore a sweater with an “F” emblazoned on it. Even without that filmstrip I probably would have fostered a life long love affair with things anthropomorphic. You never know for sure though.
I have to git on back to the homestead. We are having a triple birthday party tonight for Patrick, James and Bob Foster. They are 57, 37 and 57 respectively. It’s going to be a big one. I hope someone’s bringing food because all we have is booze. I’m making mojitos. There’s mint in those–that’s food, right? Anyway…stop on by if you’re in the area. Should be funzies.
These are my pals Werm and Rob. We drove to Milwaukee together to catch our flight to Mexico. On the way down Rob complained of coccyx (tailbone) pain that resulted from a fall down a flight of ice-covered stairs. I, of course, went “Tee-hee” because, you know, Rob said “coccyx”. I’m pretty sure we all went “Tee-hee” because, you know, Rob said “coccyx”. Maybe it’s just funny when a boy says it.
Then on Saturday I fell backwards on an ice covered driveway and injured my own coccyx. I haven’t been moving around a lot since then and despite the fact that it hurts to wear pants and walk, I still find the word amusing, just not laugh out loud funny. Coccyx. Tee-hee. It’s funny no matter what.
Since it also hurts to sit I’ve been remiss in my listing of stuff on Ebay. Today’s the day, though. I’m feeling much better and I’m ready to go back to work. What a literal and figurative pain in the ass this injury is! Be really, really careful walking on the ice, kids! Mind your coccyx! (Tee-hee.)
Isn’t this an interesting thing? I saw this machine in front of our house yesterday morning. Basically it’s a jack hammer attached to a piece of heavy equipment that breaks up the ice flows that form around storm drains. That’s interesting too. It’s March and there are ice flows that need jack hammering. The asshat groundhog was wrong.
Well, I inadvertently gave myself the day off by not ramping down the kiln last night. So now I’m off to have fun now looking for books about Mexican folk art. Why not? It’s too cold to torch anyway.
I do have stuff for Ebay. It’s still hot though so it won’t be up until later. Later!
Filed under: Bloggidy Blog | Tags: big cockroach, day of the dead beads, peso
In the spirit of absorbing things somewhere and then urping them back out somewhere else, I’m working on some Day of the Dead beads. Off season, I know, but what can you do? Not a far cry from a mask bead, really. Hopefully they’ll get better. This should give me some Watch Me Create material too.
Also, when I said there were no bugs where I was staying in Mexico I meant that there were way fewer bugs than I expected for the climate. I did find one:
That’s a peso in there for scale. A peso is about the size of a nickle or maybe a quarter which means that the bug is about the size of a small bird with antenna that are several inches long. The roach lay prone on the tile floor with it’s feet in the air, dying. I scooped it up and put it outside thinking it was something exotic. I learned it’s true nature later on. It probably wouldn’t have flushed anyway with the water pressure being so low.
Filed under: Bloggidy Blog | Tags: alfonso castillo, mexican folk art, warning labels
Do you know what I have to do? Get some damn work done. Except I can’t stop thinking about stuff I saw in Mexico. I took about 175 pictures. That’s a lot of blogs worth. Here’s another one:
I didn’t buy any gifty items on the trip…except a carton of cigarettes for my pal Sean. Cigarettes were so cheap there–only $2.40/a pack in the duty free store at the Cancun airport. The warnings on the packages are more in your face than usual:
Geez, I’m trying to be on vacation here. Lighten up.
So, in the giant shopping district in Playa del Carmen was a lot of junky stuff and a lot of really good art all kinda mixed up together. Shopping turned out to be stressful, too, with the vendors constantly vying for the attention of Senor Whiskers. It was very sensory overload and since I had no idea what I was looking at or what anything was truly worth I ended up buying nothing. I also ended up not taking pictures of any art pieces. It always kind of bugged me when people would come into my store and photograph things without buying anything so I tried not to do that in Mexico. Also I did not know how to say “Can I take a picture of this piece so I can research it on the internet and then maybe buy it later from a gallery in America” en Espanol. Anyway, I couldn’t get this one piece that I found out of my head so I found a pic of something similar on the web:
It was a skull really similar to this one. Exactly like it, really, except without the caterpillars. One of the gals in our group had been eyeing it the last two times she was in Playa. She was told by the shop owner that the whole thing is carved wood though artist who made the above piece, Alfonso Castillo, works with clay. Castillo is a pretty big wheel in the Mexican folk art world. Whether it was Castillo or someone else they wanted $500. American dollars for the one we saw, the one without the caterpillars. Had I anticipated seeing something this cool, and had I not just bought a new camera, I might have brought that skull home. I’ve been looking for Castillo’s work on the web and I can’t find any skulls for sale anywhere. Now I really want one.
A lot of places were selling these beaded masks. They are paper mache coated with wax into which beads are embedded. All of the beads are hole side up and the designs are very symbol-rich. Mother! Those look like a lot of work. Some of these masks are huge. They really knock your socks off, color wise though, nothing is ever going to trump butterfly skull. Man I want that butterfly skull.
Don and I are pretty pro-going someplace warm in the winter now that we’ve done that. The vacation was awesome. We stayed at the Xaman-Ha. Even though we went with 13 other people we had our own space with this view from the balcony. Though the condo complex was sprawling there weren’t all that many people around during the weekdays. It was quiet. Everything was great. We ended up not doing anything at all. The island of Cozumel, where you could snorkel and what not, was a ferry ride away. The day we thought we’d go there was incredibly windy so we hung out at what I came to refer to as “the compound” (a larger condo on the beach where most of the Great Dane people, the booze and the food were located). We hung out there a lot. We swam and drank there and when it was time to eat we wandered into an immense shopping district until we found something interesting to digest and digested it. Always something delicious. I feel like I should have gotten out and done more but I just didn’t feel strongly enough about accomplishing anything once I was in a warm place. Winters in Madison, especially this one, really mess with you. Getting out was enough to make me happy.
So my pictures are not going to be of ruins or fish but rather a bunch of weird whatever that amused or interested me along the way. As I mentioned before my tiny camera took a shit on the first day I got there so may photos were captured by my new tiny camera, a Samsung L730 that we picked up at a nearby Wal-Mart. It didn’t have a huge camera selection and there was that pesky language barrier so I feel pretty lucky to have found something comparable to my Cannon Powershot that I liked so well. Anyways, onto the photos.
Because of the serendipity factor, this is my favorite photo from Mexico. I saw the graffiti on this building on the way to the Wal Mart to buy the new camera. We didn’t really know where we were going so it’s entirely possible that we would have missed this one had we not been wandering aimlessly. This is the first picture I took with the new camera. I sat down on the sidewalk and took the camera out of it’s box and then Don walked over toward the building, Wal Mart bag in hand. In retrospect he should have been holding a Starbuck’s cup too. It took three shots to get it right. Directly facing Don and the building were a group of construction workers who may have been amused or disgusted or indifferent. I don’t know. For that reason I plan to re-learn Spanish before I go down there again.
This is the view from the lobby of the complex. It is where there is internet access so while I was checking email I was sitting on a large couch enjoying this view. Not sure what happens to wall-less areas like these when there’s a hurricane. Seems like the big wicker couch would get sucked right out. Sure was beautiful.
A cute sign on the counter in the lobby of the Xaman Ha. Maracas are festive and so much less “Boy, come here!” than a bell. Seems like it to me, anyway. Probably not to the people who work there.
Particularly interesting to me was the size of the lizards that hung out on the walls of the Xaman-Ha. There were tiny geckos but also there were iguanas that were a couple of feet long. That would freak me out a little, having one of these crawl up into my space. They were very agile and healthy-looking specimens. Not tame at all. Got a lot of head bobs from this one. Later in the day he crawled into the shutters you see beneath him so just his head was sticking out. Cute!
I enjoyed immensely the fact that the towels in our room were folded into swan shapes. How weird is that? I failed to get a picture of the one that was on the toilet as I came upon that one after my camera went down. It was folded into a giant bow.
Whenever I’m somewhere with a poshness that’s above what I’m used to I always think of something Michael Moore said about riding in limos. He wouldn’t ride in a limo because he was afraid of The Revolution happening during the ride and he would be mistaken for a person with means. That’s kind of a passing thought I entertain when I’m staying in a room with swan towels. Except they’re so nifty. I’m going to try to make my own the next time guests stay at our house. The Revolution would never think of looking for persons with means in there.
I guess I’m going to stop hear and maybe get some work done around the studio. More later on.
Aardvark Art Glass 