Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Hey! Why is David Byrne's Music for the Knee Plays not available on CD? This is probably his best music (excepting maybe My Life in the Bush of Ghosts ... on the other hand, I have listened to his impossibly likable Brazilian mixtapes probably more than any other recordings that I own, which counts for something)...

... and it is only available on eBay... on LP or cassette?? This makes no sense.


Memo to Dave: stop being a pompous goober, and get one of your fancy-pants friends to shell out some sawbucks, and get Knee Plays on a nice CD for the kids. They need it!

Monday, February 27, 2006

I don't ask for much... really. I am content to watch Dave Chappelle and then watch some Michel Gondry when it's finished. Then listen to, I don't know, some Mos Def* or whatever. You know. For some reason all the aforementioned are in a big pile of marvelousness, called Dave Chappelle's Block Party, directed by my close friend Michel. Ahhhh.

All of a sudden, 2006 is alive, and well! Thanks you guys.


*for anybody besides me that wondered what happened to Black Jack Johnson, the Dr Know-Bernie Worrell-Doug Wimbish-Mos Def-Will Calhoun super-groop, which I was ready to call The Black ASIA... they have 4 or so tracks on Mos' new CD and they are whole wheat goodness (on one side, light frosting on the other)!!! If you like noisy funkness (à la Praxis).

Saturday, February 25, 2006

My son is 2. He was all tucked in, almost asleep, and I was certain that I heard him say "CRABBIT." I immediately seized upon this new species of half-crustacean, half-lagomorph as a done deal.

Apparently he was trying to say "GROMIT" (as in "Wallace and...), with a stuffed-up nose, as any well-informed 2-year-old might say upon being tucked in.

Too bad. The damage has been done.
I am scratching my head over all the mediocre-to-awful reviews of The Brothers Grimm that I believed, sadly, instead of just opening my wallet at the mere mention of Terry Gilliam. I loved this film!! I guess my head fits into the mitteleuropean fairytale scheme pretty easily (I also firmly believe that the made-for-TV Arabian Nights is one of the most entertaining films ever made, and I dare you to convince me otherwise), but my normally skeptical wife gave it an enthusiastic cheer too. Go see Brothers Grimm if you haven't already! Go see it again!

One thing I really got riled about was what I saw as a tip o' the hat to my homie Aleksandr Ptushko, whom I have mentioned earlier, purveyor of enchanting 1960s Russian fantasy films that are easily mocked (especially in their Americanized [Cormanized, even!] versions), but awesome nonetheless.

I will wait for Terry to email me before I let go of my theory that he copped Ptushko's eerie lighting, mounds of dust, and swirling cameras for the evil fortress scenes. Gaaah!

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Here's an all-you-can-eat buffet of nourishing art... The Henry Boxer Gallery has tasty morsels of Lynn Hauer...










...Maria Wnek, plus more eye candy than you can digest at one sitting, from dozens of other artists new and vintage. I'm going back for seconds right now.

























I gots to recommend Michael Sowa (more here)while I'm at it, although I couldn't find his stuff at the Boxer site. Apparently he is not an outsider, or a visionary. He is funny, though.

C'mon! It's an upside-down rabbit, people! Lighten up!

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

You know that recurring dream, when you get to a party and everyone there is a cartoon character from a breakfast cereal, and you're, like, the only person with three dimensions? And it's like, a most rockin party, and everyone stays crunchy in milk? Yeah! The dream is real, baby!! Yeah!!!


Must love the WFMU blog!

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

No, no... I haven't found the Drew Friedman blog. But there is a great history of that drum break you've heard everywhere since 1987. You can impress your next date with your thorough understanding of the Winstons, if you listen closely. Now go beat those skins!!

The link is from boingboing, and the Drew Friedman masterpiece is from my own privately owned, not-for-sale copy of RAW Vol. 2 No.3, of which listening to drums reminded me.

Monday, February 20, 2006



Great tidings! There is a whole blogful of Jacob Goble and it doesn't even cost anything!

I wrote about Herr Goble a few minutes ago, when I found the astounding tiny showcase, and now I can burrow further down the rabbit-hole, thanks to the magic of blog comments. Go chase this guy down!

Sunday, February 12, 2006

I decided to keep flailing around the web until I found somebody that made me want to turn the computer off and start drawing... and it didn't take that long. Behold Sam Hiti and his sloppy, cheerful mess of a website.












Courtesy of your friend Jay at Monsterama!!
Steer over to hydrocephalicbunny to get caught up with Sylvain "The Triplets of Belleville" Chomet... he made a wizardly little ad for an insurance company that acts like Belleville with Miyazaki visiting for an afternoon. Huzzah!






Plus, on the consumer tip... following are three happy additions I have made to my DVD library recently that you might consider as well:

(exhibit A) the Disney Rarities collection has lots of terrific animation from Diz animation titans from the 40s, 50s and 60s. I loved it, the kids cheered, you can't lose with this one. Except for Leonard Maltin leering at you with that deathlike grin between scenes... that gave me hives.

(exhibit B) I wrote before about Miss Pussycat's gumbylicious online puppetry, but only recently plumped the cash to get the DVD... and it is waaaay better than I had even hoped. She (with her bubbe Quintron) will make your whole day. You will thank yourself!

Finally, (exhibit C) on the puppet side of things, Everything Else Vol. 1 is a DVD of the Chapman brothers massive output of Homestar Runner, including very avant-garde puppets! Plus, of course, their usual cavalcade of flash merriment. Make it yours!

Tuesday, February 07, 2006


A Short List of Reasons to be Proud I Grew Up in Central Massachusetts
(and never moved very far away):

1. My hometown is featured in several H.P. Lovecraft stories. Is yours?

2. The next town over (more or less) has extra-terrestrial creatures running all over the place.

3. Several neighboring towns are eerily located underwater.

4. Boltonite! A mineral found only in Egypt, Russia, Antarctica, and Bolton, MA.
Ask Lovecraft why this is (see #1). Very mysterious.

5. The MBTA is loaded with zombie-friendly abandoned subway stations, most likely leading to more Lovecraftian subterranean horrors (see Reason #1.)
...
(OK, so the MBTA is not in central Mass.... but the photo above shows an airplane from a mysteriously abandoned airport in Bolton. Which is not spooky at all, but ... but it was abandoned. Mysteriously.)
This is not really a forum for restaurant reviews, but there are some bars that transcend the miserable hum-drum so... so... dustily, that one must take note. Anyone who has not tossed back a couple of dark beers (for that is the only name they are given here, and a pox on all name brands) at Manhattan's McSorley's is in for a treat.

You will think you have climbed into your great-grandfather's mildewy old steam trunk, and come out in the Spouter-Inn from Moby-Dick, or Gangs of New York.


Scary? Absolutely. Ready to catch fire at a moments' notice? Without a doubt. All the more reason to turn the laptop off, get ye to New York, and start quaffing.

Monday, February 06, 2006


I feel dirty, taking things from drawn.

...

Anyways, I found this on drawn. Isn't it magnificent? It has the fighting robots and the jumping little things that I look for, all in one place. Why complain?








Plus, Mark from Finland directs our attention to the inspired chattering skull that is, uh, this. I dare you to not to enjoy it. I will send you $5 if you don't think it is pretty rad. If you have the pent-up energy, why not use it to amuse your global neighbors??