There are all these t-shirts I have personally wanted forever and now with my new found love of t-shirt making, it's happening. This is not threadless style where everybody has to like it. No I'm a dictator!
This is the first in series I plan to do of unsung movie moments. Most people don't know who this is... but the die hard (that's not a hint) corny action movie buffs will appreciate this one. What? You didn't know that is Ivan Drago from Rocky IV!! This is the actual still from the moment he utters the greatest on screen threat ever... "I must break you..."
If you look through my school notebooks, binders and books throughout the years you'll see just about as many doodles, sketches and scribbles as notes. I've always been into street art style letter graphics. Every now and then I pick a few letters to string together in some graffiti style sketches. As my adopted artist name, Sane now appears on many of my free-time free-hands.
Wild Style is an intricate selection of colors, shapes, lines and shadows used in graffiti to produce visually stimulating pieces of art. It's like a dialect of written English, an self-taught cursive sort of speak, very much a cipher. Think tagger = padawan learner and graph artist piecing Wild Style = Jedi. I've been playing around with a archaic version of Wild Style more focused on using shapes and colors to obscure the text.
Here is the first
Wild Style is also the title of the landmark Hip - Hop culture film released in 1982. It chronicles a story of a graffiti artists named Zoro in turn of the 80's New York. Many have heard the title track of Wild Style as the intro to the seminal Nas album Illmatic but never caught that the sample was from Wild Style. It definitely serves equally as good a purpose introducing one of the most awe-striking 40 minutes of hip - hop you will ever hear. If you follow the link to the movie's website they actually have the clip from the opening scene posted with the Nas sample (navigate to the movie tab and its the third clip). This movie is also good for a interlude sample used by the Beastie Boys on Check Your Head proceeding the Maestro. The influence this movie had on other hip - hop artists doesn't stop there. I'll let you do some homework on your own.
When you watch this movie don't blame me for wanting to jump fences and climb steel girders.
Here 45 (technically 90) minute exercise number second (hint: relax your eyes). The point of this one was to draw all the interlocking empty z-shapes first and then fill them in. I'll do some time-lapse beginning, middle, end picts next time.
Wu - Tang Clan karaoke y'all. This past Saturday night at this spot called the Highbury in Bay View these local Milwaukee Hip - Hop heathens, using the moniker Brew - Tang Clan, played the Wu- Tang instrumentals for eager Wu - Imposters to bring the vocals to. One catch separated the real from the faulty... no lyrics on teleprompters. It was a nice touch for weeding out johnny come new Wu - enthusiasts.
Mostly ODB verses were recited... Shimmy Shimmy Ya and the Wu Forever track where ODB is screaming about sh*tting on lawns and rap souffle where requested. There was a notable rendition of the Raekwon overclassic Knuckleheadz that reminded that when you listen to that album you become invincible.
I was harassing the host to get the Liquid Swords track Duel of the Iron Mic and he came through. The DJ had to dig through the internet for that beat. I had to take my turn ripping a track. I only had the first verse down but people were definitely feeling it like the track just came out. Just goes to show some classic take time to mature. The host Dana Coppafeel actually turned out to be pretty cool. He's got his own music out and its worth of listen if your into indy Hip - Hop.
Next time it goes down I'm going to have an arsenal ready.
So you ever wonder what happened to those old shopping carts with the instructions on the kid seat? Well I was helping a friend move and low and behold in the basement of her building was this shopping cart with the most absurd illustrations how to use the shopping cart with child in tow. Being the stickler for blatantly obvious opportunities to ridicule such non-sense I took it upon myself to... ahhem... elaborate...
before...
and after...
Some day young children everywhere will thank me for enriching their lives with another cynical t-shirt.
All around Milwaukee you can see physical changes taking place, clean-cut mixed-use developments, fragrant plantings in the boulevards. The streets are even getting paved after ten years of neglect. Some of that same rejuvenating energy is being released on the social scene too. Gallery Night is not a new invention and it's nice to see creative outlets taking root in Milwaukee.
One of my favorite displays of the night hung not from a wall of Art Asia, but from the shoulder of a stern-looking fellow who looked like a typical renegade with a Harley parked outside. Stereotypes in place, alligator would be expected to cover his feet. Instead one rested gently cradled on his forearm and bicep. Everyone has to have a cause.
The caretaker of the endangered Chinese Alligator had the kind of leeriness emitting from those that think satellite surveillance is being taken of them. Apparently he has been battling the animal rights activist, the extreme ones that do not believe anyone should own pets (especially if they are alligators). Those pretentious fun-suckers! Personally, I am all for docile 45 lbs, 18 year old alligators chilling on Gallery Night with their masters. Wait a minute... this must be one of only several handfuls of Chinese alligators left on the planet.
Everything was red. Not Commy red but deep visceral blood red. This relic of a beast fit in perfectly with the ambiance of Art Asia, a trading post of Chinese gifts, furniture, and artifacts. Minus the crowd hovering around reptilian and owner, you may not have noticed the gator's presence. It was a serene creature, an expression opposite to the one given by the typical bewitching "alligator smile". The constant glance of this creature lacked menace unlike its relatives, looking almost relieved to feel protected by and outside force other than it's own wild instinct. I am usually harsh on exotic animal owners, but I think I can let this one slide. My super-cool friend Miranda and I both ended up donating 5 bucks to the cause.
Gallery Night is a quarterly event, which I think would make the next one scheduled for late November.
When accomplishment overwhelmed my senses at the conclusion of 2 months of rehearsals and 10 straight days of performances, I found myself nearly shaking from feeling the energy that was stored, in the now empty space that was our small black box performance hall. My appreciation radiated in a very genuine moment, my liquid friend Carlo hadn't started kicking my arsenic at that point.
Partaking in the glory that is performing in a Shakespeare classic, left my blog sorely neglected. The production of Hamlet was an attention hoarding bastard but well worth the effort. A couple hours after the final show, my old buddy Carlo (who we served to patrons as brand XXX moonshine) definitely congratulated me with the graciousness of a pal that likes to see you make a fool of yourself so they can laugh.
With music blaring and an empty chair audience, I shimmied around the hall like a ecstatic kid embroiled in the funnest 4 person celebration I have every been a part of, then - cruck - crash - a glass object topples from a vacant seat onto the black concrete floor. Oops. I glace down and its an ash tray. It's clearly cracked, but as I picked it up gently I notice that it broke perfectly into the Anarchy symbol. It was an omen, a confirmation that the perfect storm just occurred.
This was not your father's Hamlet. Directed and starred by a renegade theatre study, Brian Rott lead 3 and half hours of mayhem on stage as Hamlet. Set during the roaring 20's, this Hamlet rendition drew inspiration from the silent film and vaudevillian influences of the time.
I played Guildenstern, one of Hamlet's childhood friends who along with Rosencrantz, are hired by Hamlet's mother to spy on him. Some perceptive audience members shared that they noticed right away the hints of Laurel and Hardy, in the portrayal of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, as we constantly tried to one-up each other in scenes as an on-running joke.
Taking the 20's theme to the hilt, the duo's reunion scene with Hamlet was set in a speakeasy with a showgirl and tin cups and all.
The vaudevillian cherry on top was the ending, with Laertes and Hamlet offing each other with pie tins of shaving cream. Hamlet's mother, Gertrude, seeing this ends her misery by dumping a 2-pint-tincture-spiked crystal glass of water on herself leaving her completely drenched, thus prompting King Claudius to shamefully pie himself in the face, drawing the 'tragic' affair to a comic close.
If you asked me a year ago if I would be an a Shakespeare play, I would have said "Are you crazy" in a "What you talking 'bout Willis" kind of way. If you would have told me I would break an ash tray into an Anarchy sign, I would have said "maybe", but never suspecting it would consummate the closing of my first semi-heavy acting experience.
Last week the full moon was really intense, some kind of special moon astrologically that was supposed to open up a time portal allowing the ancient beast Biroc to take a bath in the Big Dipper or something. Well anyway, it kept me awake for 4 nights in a row. I'm putting my heart back in my pocket these days, and it's taking longer than usual, especially since there's been two months since I found it on the sidewalk abruptly, like "gee you could have just handed it back to me, I might need that someday."
The funny thing is I was breezing through my sketch book and came across a page that I wrote last fall, maybe October about this same person... immediately intrigued my ability to ignore my wise pencilings... It read...
I just finished my Air Flight 89 refurb project Nascar style. This project took way too long to finish. They are painted and airbrushed. I left my air brush at a friend's house for months thinking I would airbrush them. Then in the absence of my airbrush, I started playing around with paints and found the mixed-media to be pretty cool and easier to work with.
I always had this obsession, as a kid, with the phrase 'spic and span' and never could figure out where it came from. Obviously when I was old enough to learn about the brand of cleaning products it made even less sense. I'm not a huge Nascar fan but the advertising is so gaudy and blatantly consumerist, it's almost excusable.
I've got some other ideas and favorite color schemes and slogans to play off of... I have to go find some more beat up shoes, before I go full out on brand new kicks!
So in the wake of my first e-commerce success I find out that Red Bubble, keeps 99% of the sale... on a $23 shirt I get $3... that's not a fair trade for international exposure! I changing channels to etsy!!! Duh!
I love my new shirt, just printed this early today (now yesterday)...
Now that the school year is over I am fully embracing the artists clock, it has 16 hours! Acting took me there, now making stuff will keep me there!
So I have an artist page which the "Never Can Say Good Bye" post's images are available as T-Shirt graphics. I put them up today in the wee morning, and some one liked the Smooth Criminal dance image enough to put it on there body! This is my first... aaaahhhh... sale!!!
I never imagined how much fun I would have partaking in the spectacle that someone else's dream built... but I did. The US Air Guitar Championships tour made an emergency stop in Milwaukee, between jaunts to Cleveland and Minneapolis. This is serious business and the faithful die hard. Luckily the Milwaukee stop was just an exhibition thus allowing me to mime a rendition of Devo's Whip It with a couple friends (aptly dubbed the Furious Danger Purple Kangaroo Band).
Mid riff, I dashed into the crowd and managed to free a lamp shade from a rather curvy lamp, before knocking the lamp part to the floor. The prop increased the Devo affect 15 fold...
This type of outing was definitely worth the time on a Friday night. In addition to the comedy that is air guitar, I also worked myself out of breath on the air drums, as well as, the air bass and guitar. The cardio-vascular aspect relieved any guilt I did not have post performance. Bonus!!!
So I guess these two guys just started doing this one day... one is named Hot Nix Hulahan (while at the karaoke console, he personally gave me the nod of approval for the lamp shade stunt) and the other Bjorn Turoque. Thank you for bringing novelty to an participatory entertainment form that had lost its novelty. If only I remembered my camera!
I definitely plan to check out the movie. So many nations with in a nation! The US Air Guitar website has a schedule on the main page... so it may be in your town soon!
So I haven't been around for awhile, I've been busy not making time for things like everyone else, but a couple of weeks ago a rare piece of video was shot capturing the birth of a new intellectual highlight for us males (uh, what ever that means). It's really the aftermath of a cooking endeavor, gone terribly right depending on how you look at it. I was trying to bake a cake, a quadruple layer cake no less, on Easter Sunday since no one else was cooking anything. It was already quadruple layered so one added innovation was that it was also to be low-fat, by means of substituting something for the 4 eggs and 2 cups of oil that were required. Well, here is what I can up with...
Want to indulge in this delight... I can't guarantee that yours will look as good as mine but it will definitely cure you of any chocolate cravings.
Items Needed:
2 boxes of extra moist devil's food cake; 2 free-range brown chicken eggs; 6 tablespoons of low-fat mayonnaise; 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil; 1 can of whipped chocolate frosting to taste;
Instructions:
Combine ingredients according to box directions replacing eggs and oil with the low-fat mayonnaise. Beat thoroughly...Pour batter into circular pans and bake... make sure you get good breakage by trying to empty pans as carefully as possible... enjoy!
I bought an iMac in the spring of 2005 when Apple's stock was about $24 a share and have been loving it every since (minus the lack of RAM). But, if you're anything like me you are suspicious of all these software updates alerts you're hounded with every few weeks. Me being the stubborn technology user I am, refused to update iTunes for about 3 years. Recently, I discovered that every time I tried to burn a cd, iTunes would just conk-out on me as soon as I would hit the burn button. After iTunes quit on me unexpectedly about 5 times in a row, I figured out this must be a part of the scam to get me to update to iTunes 8.1 (this is a feeble recreation of the mental muttering I was doing at the time).
So being the Encino man that I can be sometimes, I decided to just leave iTunes alone for about a month and see if that would solve the problem. Nope no luck tonight I tried to burn the The Game's newish album LAX for mom dukes (don't ask or laugh it ain't funny) and the same thing happened again. Finally, out smarted by Steve Job's hoard silicon mongers I was compelled to download 8.1, wack!!! Now the first thing I see is some side bar about Genius or something using pretty pictures trying to coax me to load it so it can start communicating with iTunes store and DJ for me. If this Genius is anything like the dweebs at the Mac store I definitely will leave that feature disabled permanently. Is it just me or is the elementary appeal of Mac getting annoying?
Another change I was pissed about is seeing my beloved radioactive burn button missing from the top right hand corner of the iTunes window. Why!!!! So anyway I got over that pretty quickly and tried burning a cd... put cd-r in and wait... no cd icon below the library icon... WTF... So I go to Google and ask it how to burn a cd on iTunes 8.1, and I get these bootleg tech web page discussions about uninstalling iTunes then reinstalling it, so much for collective-everyone-contributes-wisdom (more on that soon). I decide to consult iTunes help and it tells me to look for a burn disc button at the bottom right, huh? Nothing is there buddy...err, Genius. Finally, I figure out this techno Rubic's Cube. If you want to burn a cd you can not take songs directly from the library, you have to drag the songs into a new play list and then once inside that play list the burn disc button appears at the bottom right. Its a lazy looking rectangle button, damn programmers need to spend 15 minutes off of World of Warcraft and at least try to make the burn button look cool... GOD!
The verdict on the chili contest sponsored by WMSE is 3 thumbs up. There was plenty of room in the venue and lots of cool signs too, and of course, great variety in restaurants and chili styles. As one put it, "It's like meatloaf, same dish but everyone has a different take on it." How true, the simmering stews had everything from brats to green beans to seafood.
My favorites were:
1. Fuel Cafe's Vegan Chili. It was very flavorful and topped with a guacamole sour cream and a few sprigs of cilantro.
2. Riverwest Co-Op's Vegetarian Chili. This cauldron's spices were savory and just a hint of sweetness. The added bonus: tofu meat!
3. Old German Beer Hall's Bratwurst Chili. I made an exception to try this one... it was worth it.
Slightly disappointing were:
87. The Hi - Hat's Meat Chili. This is a great place to hang, but sadly the chili looked like Public School lunch, manager's choice, and tasted worse... oops.
86. Milwaukee Ale House's Vegetarian Chili. They offered a Tex-Mex style Chili. The chef worked really hard on it, and the pico de gallo was a nice touch but over all not enough flavor for a spice hound like me. Besides they are known for meat dishes, and from what I heard the meaty version was notable.
Experiencing the ultimate training on how-things-work in public education at the lowest level of stature, as a substitute, I'm gaining more valuable insight into the issue of public education then I ever imagined. Much of what I attained so far has to do with expectations. Any attempt to capture and do justice to the subject of teaching through cinema is tried and too often failed. This past year a foreign film Entre les murs (The English title is The Class) took a swipe at wiping that stubborn chalk off of the facade that teachers always win in the end. I havn't seen the movie yet but judging from the reviews this film might provide a perspective of classroom dynamics today's future educators can use to heighten their understanding.
You enter the classroom and you know anything can happen, but you expect that the kids will have a some sort of basic desire to gather some new tidbits of knowledge. Then the CD-ROMs start flying and desks are toppled. Pencils become flesh scrapping devices and bathrooms UFC octagons. When the storm calms, similar to a hurricane, if you are lucky you have a small window to transmit some academic or life lesson, before some minute incident reminds you that the rest of the hurricane is on its way. I often laugh to myself and wonder if I'm crazy to think that this what you must realistically plan for everyday as a teacher and if I'm crazier to completely embrace this reality. In my view its not a battle that eventually the teacher wins, as is often portrayed on film, but rather it's an never-ending adventure story, a process, a lifestyle. Testing the Water
I have a friend who works for City Year, the name-brand non-profit that does cool stuff in deprived neighborhoods while rocking Tim-bones on their toes. Even though it makes sense why, I was a little disappointed when I heard the cut-off age was 24 years old. I caught myself being overly cynical about the whole AmeriCorp cultural phenomenon and urged myself to think of it another way. Working in impoverished urban areas is very Romanticized in the US. In some way, I perceive AmeriCorp to be the organizational embodiment of this Romanticism and at my most cynical view I view it as a zombie army feeding off of the antiquated paternalistic"white man's burden" ideal and body of knowledge. You have Hollywood especially feeding this train of thought. Dangerous Minds maybe the best example of this category of movie. Equally idealist but obviously not motivated by cultural hegemony, Lean on Me, probably represents the best in the category of inspirational education movies. Both feed the "save the world" mentality that will drive those with limited first-hand experience in how poverty destroys the social fabric of communities, to pursue careers in social services or education in order to "make a difference". Some succeed but just as many are left jaded by their experiences when the "difference made" is contrary to what they expected (i.e. no difference).
My change of heart on AmeriCorp occurred when I convinced myself that Americorp-esque programs at least give young professionals needed exposure to unfamiliar communities, so that valuable lessons are learned during that first go-around in the system. The stakes are very high, adolescents and young adults can be unforgiving. Young education professionals do deserve a space to err, temper their expectations, fears, and misconceptions. Deprived communities do need saving, but young education professionals also need room to confirm or deny they're biases and decide if they can challenge themselves to withhold sympathy and/or judgment, and instead offer empathy and stern compassion. Developing realistic expectations and the appropriate attitudes don't hurt either. Becoming an effective educator, is truly a trial by fire process that takes more than "structured activities", "engagement", and do-good intentions to achieve.
This is where movies like Entre les murs (The Class) can serve a very important function simply by entertaining the possibility of failure to "reach" the students and irresolvable conflicts as classroom outcomes. As a side bar it is also very intriguing to me that Entre les murs proposes that the challenge of educating youth is shared internationally with respect to the factors that seem purely American, i.e. urban poverty, general social depravity, despair and legacies of oppression. I can't wait to check this one out, it might be the best since 187, and an avenue to compel the discussion concerning education to heed the contextual realities, and broaden the discourse to capture it's global aspects.
If the freaks come out on Friday night, the geeks and would-be Breakfast Club-ers definitely come out on Saturday afternoon, especially for a paper airplane flying contest. Red Bull is known for sponsoring bar drink-offs and real full-action stunt air-shows, but at this event having the skills to propel an aeronautically sound 80 gram paper flyer the farthest, will book you a trip to the world Paper Wings championship to be held in Hangar 7, Salzburg Airport, in Melbourne, Australia. At the Milwaukee qualifying site, I bore witness that many come, but only one makes it off of the top flight proving grounds.
Hypnotized by all the commotion, I walked carelessly onto the indoor launching field and immediately caught a gliding airplane in the leg. I scanned the area in front of me to find the owner of the stray plane. In the bottom of my periphery I see a whipper-snapper, at best 7 years old, barreling towards me. I congratulated the young engineer with a thumbs up for "good one!" which he eagerly flashed back. Young Izak would later go on to win second place, at 5.8 seconds, for the airplane with the longest hang time. I'm not surprised judging by how far he ran from across the room to collect his paper machine.
Deja Boom Box
Milwaukee is now in its fourth year as a stop on the national tour. A Red Bull hostess, dressed appropriately in a navy hued flight attendant-esque shirt-dress and white pro-ked-like sneakers, filled me in on the fact that the event started in a high school gym, but now has grown to reside in the Eagle's Ballroom.
Milwaukee locals know Eagle's for its mid-sized concerts. It was eerie being there in the middle of the day. Blinded by sun rays beaming through the south windows that I never knew the Eagle's had, my memory projected back to the shows I spectated there in 1998-99. I saw the Roots perform one of the most dynamic sets I've ever witnessed, lip-induced sound effects and live instruments abound. I'm pretty sure the uncanny Rahzel even attended this one. Can't forget to mention Common made an unexpected cameo. He spontaneously b-boyed a helicopter increasing his legendary 20-fold in my pages. The Run D.M.C. show irrevocably comes to mind also. I feel fortunate to have waved my right Adidas shoe here in the presence of Jam Master Jay before his day ended. Need I say more. The house DJ aided my flashback pumping some unidentified Pharcyde track to encourage the participants to prolong their flights as long as possible, and that they did on and off the runway.
At a gaudy inflatable Red Bull arch, the competition tarmac began, lined on both sides with white Christmas lights. Most of the entertainment was taking place off of the battle strip though. Eager contestants set up shop everywhere busily folding, measuring, testing their goose-feather-weight jets. The bar set by previous paper aviators added pressure. The world record paper plane flight is 207 feet and 4 inches, that's 69 yards! NFL quarterbacks can barely throw a football that far! The most hang time is 26.7 seconds. However, I would estimate the model flight vector of the average wiz-kid participating in this competition at about 14 inches.
Hot Shots
Envision a vigilant effort by a novice plane technician to build the ultimate airborne weapon. Leaving his detailed 12-step blueprints of how to construct the "stealth bomber" of paper planes, he straightens up from the workbench to find a suitable test site o the ballroom floor. He winds up after a couple of practice shoulder cocks, lets his wrist travel forward at the perfect release point and whoosh... the plane pathetically topples end over end, corkscrews agonizingly one too many times, subsequently dashing to the ground a half-a-pace away from the pilot. The plane enjoyed a welcome back to land led by a chorus of mocking laughter from bystanders including me.
As karma would have it, the next moment I would be parrying to the left avoiding an AWOL flight path of a junior Howard Hughes, only to nearly have an eye gouged by another plane originating from an aspiring Chuck Yeager 30 feet away at my 3 o'clock. The paper plane had just zoomed over my head to a cruising altitude of 20 feet, before about-facing into a sunlight glare-soaked descent, hurling back towards its rightful owner like a boomerang. I think to myself "I should have brought my Sabotage aviator glasses to protect my walleye vision."
One particularly nonchalant plane-launcher heaves loose one that flies a respectable distance before ascending to the balcony above, shrugs and walks away. I'm thinking this guy will never meet the girl of his dreams. A couple hours into the festivities the floor looked like the Terminator just got done blowing up some innocent file cabinets.
I end up taking refuge at one of the workstations close to the official competition area. After about a minute, one of the Red Bull staff offers to help me get more hooped-up off of their complementary neon potions (I had one earlier and should have left it at that) and I accept. Then an unassuming lad in a knit hat rushes up with a fresh sheet of paper in his hand, followed by his conspicuously natty trusty assistant (white dude with dreads, sonic the hedgehog-like minus the sonic).
I confide to the knit hat guy I'm happy to see the lost art of paper-airplane-making stay alive and that from my experience know-a-days kids would rather just throw text books in class. He laughs and mentions that he actually is the leader in the indoor space race. I asked him what was his secret, of course it was nothing special just fold and pray. Although far short of the international benchmarks, turns out the knit hat guy, Tyler, wins the two main events, furthest in flight at 82 feet plus an inch, and longest in hang-time just edging out lil' Izak at 6.66 seconds. The DJ in a fitting gesture raises the hook 'em horns salute.
Hot Shots: Part Duex
Before the main event winners were announced, planned outrage necessarily had to take place. The 'freestyle' flying competition allowed the severely esteem-challenged and the most dedicated attention-seekers to get one more chance at the center stage. Accompanied by a certain Top Gun soundtrack hit, courageous women and men alternated entering the competition ring, cordoned off with a polygonal shaped perimeter of masking tape, adeptly declared the "danger zone." This really was code for "if you sucked at actually constructing a flying device, please step into this area and be rewarded for being a jack-ass."
By this time the event host "stewardesses" are shot-gunning Red Bull, which gives one collegiate an idea to throw his plane then bust a back flip, then shot-gun a Red Bull. Of course deviant behavior though often shunned in controlled environments, in this setting is contagious and concomitantly causes a fairly large, markedly dorky dude in pajama pants (who actually crashed two of his planes inches from me earlier) to toss his plane into a whirly-jig flight path spanning one decimeter, and vault himself into a Chris Farley somersault to back-splash, with tremendous impact, then stunning the crowd further by revealing each hand clutching a Red Bull, both of which he simultaneously cookie monster chomped, drenching himself from bib to thighs with energy juice. Why, my friend, why!?!? I found out why about 3 hours later when I felt my heart palpitating from the two Red Bulls I downed earlier. If I learned anything, it's that I am easily amused and more importantly that the most ridiculous talents, especially ones reprimanded by teachers, can win you free trips to cool places. All you hand-in-armpit squishers your day is coming...
America... F*%K Yeah!
Red Bull will be spreading McWorld with a qualifying round in Tehran, Iran tomorrow morning at 10:00am. I thought that country was unstable, hostile to American culture, and on the brink of nuking us. Ahmedijad must not be that bad of a guy after all, at least they can freely fly paper planes. Closer to home the next stops are in Iowa City, IA and Corvallis, OR, then back to the mid-west in Champaign, Il, Duluth, MN, Bowling Green, OH and Madison, WI. Make sure you have your college i.d. to prove you're among the best and the brightest and worthy of a flight pass.
I think camera phones are super obnoxious, but ultimately great for capturing unexpected moments. Too bad mine is super low resolution, damn old skool razor phone. I still managed to digi-click this one.
Maybe since I've been in a artsy mood things look different to me right now. Anyway, I'm in the UWM Student Union and on the landing of a stairwell is this guy sleeping extra hard. Understanding that this is the best rest he will get for the remainder of the night I can't knock him, because I'm sure he will be hustled out on to the streets as soon as the building closes. In this moment though, I could not help but think how cool of a public art sculpture he would be if he were wax, since he is not, he still manages to add interest to an otherwise drab stairwell, in actuality he is providing a public good by appearing as art, so his presumed indigence is not for naught... hmmm, ponder that thought.
College radio giant 91.7 WMSE is hosting a chili contest fundraiser in early March. I [heart] chilli and I [heart] WMSE enough to don two bumper stickers on my vehicular, so I guess I will have to attend. Plenty of local restaurants will compete including mainstays like Beans & Barely and Milwaukee Ale House, but also local favorites like the Bremen Cafe, and unknown to me's like Hotch-A-Do. The event has and admission of $6 and $1 charge for chili samples but it's for a good cause.
If you're from Milwaukee and over the age of 30, you know the only place on the FM airwaves you could get the illest in underground, above ground and unappreciated rap beats was 91.7 WMSE. First it was 'K-J the D-J' that used to come on once a week at about 12:30am (only original true masters know what night it was, I'm not giving all the gems away). I was a middle schooler back then and to catch the full broadcast I would have to set a cassette tape to record all night and position my boombox just-right next to the window to get reception. Then Mike J featuring Pitt and the Pendulum took over, they held down the time slot proper through the late 90's until, I stopped following them around the turn of the century. This fool Pitt had the only feature length "black" karate movie at the time, I wonder if you could still get it from somewhere. Now-a-days the Saturday Afternoon Boogie Bang carries the baton for hip-hop heads, with cameos by local legend Doc B.
Ninety-nine percent of the station's programming is non-urban music and worth supporting. You get seldom exposed glimpses of all genres from indie rock to instrumental to Lo-Fi slop rock (it's punk music with a bad show name). WMSE definitely keeps my music diet regular. Too much Daughtry and all that ganster-pop r&b mash that is served on the commercial stations can get you mentally constipated. Thanks to the internet you can tune in anytime and anywhere you can get a broadband signal. Rockabilly Chili Contest will take place Sunday March 9, 2009 from 11:00am to 4:00pm at the Milwaukee School of Engineering Kern Center, 1245 N. Broadway in downtown Milwaukee.
It's a week past Friday February the 13th, the opening of the re-release of the killassic horror flick Friday the 13th. I made it out on the first night, and the diehard horror fans made a respectable showing. The fact that it was actually Friday the 13th and Valentine's Day weekend made it marginally cool. It was a multicultural, inter-generational affair. Even a obnoxiously-Fergie-fabulous Indian from India babe (ooh I'm awful) made it out to the late show in her Beverly Feldman pumps (Big uppities to my fearless j-list leader for sniffing that one out, she couldn't go into the movie before accosting the woman about the origin of her cool peds).
Part slasher part Weekend at Bernie's part Cheech and Chong softcore porn style, Jason's resurrection for the younger generation does little justice to the mysterious and distant half-dead psychopath' of the 80's. What a difference two decades makes. 2009 J-Voorheesy makes the original incarnation look like a grandpa or at least a great uncle. Old hockey face now-a-days is straight to the point, extra specially brutal, persistent, but yet is able to maintain his slightly ironic, mute, pop-out-of-now-where since of humor... when dispatching unwitting teens, just in less creative ways. The highlight of the show came when the infamous "Chih, chih, chih, hah, hah, hah" track finally played near the end of the flick, which prompted an eager studio audience member to interject into the movie-viewing silence "Out of breath azz n*gg*!" with the uncanny comedic timing of a high school class clown.
An astute friend of mine of the Catholic persuasion noticed that all the teens that got hacked to death were in commission of some carnal sin. I never thought of it that way before. Could Jason have a higher calling? As you can see, Jason here has the Ambercrombie archangel frat-boy look going, complete with heavenly aura! Now go ye forth and terrorize heathen youth... Maybe killing slacking phuck-ups is kind of like recycling... it takes some effort but is ultimately better for all of us in the end. You have about 4 days to see this movie in its full big-screen glory. Even though it's the "#1 movie in America" as of tonight, if it makes it to DVD before you decide to check it out, do yourself a favor and rent part III of the original series on VHS. The new Bayshore Mall does have an incognito new theatre (with no website), I didn't see it there though, but you can!
There is a new comedy showcase in Milwaukee called Funny First Sundays, uh, at Comedy Sportz on 1st Street right south of downtown. You get a little taste of BET Comic View because its hosted by Damon Williams. What? You're supposed to know him. No not Damon Wayans, Williams. Okay lets be serious, you get a little taste of Comic View in Milwaukee. That means they could have used the pudgy referee with the glasses in real life. The funny part was that the first thing Williams said was, "I heard about y'all [in Milwaukee]." The show couldn't even get started before some fool, in the very first row cackling at himself, is yelling 'tomatoes' at a poet who was introducing the event with too many bitter rhythmic words about some pretty light-skinned girl he doesn't think is pretty since she was unreceptive to his advances, or should I say what she thought were his advances.
If you didn't figure it out by now, Blacks now have a reason to be late on Monday mornings, that's if you are working anyway. Straying from its improv roots, Comedy Sportz better retain some security and metal detectors. You got audience members that try to upstage the show by yelling slick comments like they're in MPS again and get mad when the comedian starts roasting phantom hecklers they can't see through the spotlights. That's the best part though, everyone in the room is fair game, even one of the servers got caught "looking like Jack Black". You might get lit-up for just getting up to go to the restroom with the wrong walk or too big of a booty, or especially if you are a raffle winner who has the nerve to come out the house and get on stage with a wrinkled shirt. It went something like this. Between acts Williams goes "...Congratulations man, you won a cd. You got a choice of India Arie, India Arie, ah India Arie. Oh, yeah that's right she got a new album coming out. That's the one you want?... okay good choice Chris, give it up for Chris y'all," (Chris steps of the stage, Williams under his breath) "Man, if you going to use the iron at least turn it on." Aaah, got him! You might even get a glimpse of a couple of, we'll just say, ladies wearing butt length silk napkins. Funny First Sundays is a good way to celebrate the end of the Sunday sabbath. You get to people watch, hear professional laugh artists and get a few chuckles off of both.
Wondering about the 'Aahk' in the title (oh yeah, I changed the title)? Williams let us know that is the sound you get when you do something in bed with your boo that she's not comfortable with (or to refer to you if you're that kind of dude). Funny First Sundays is First Sundays until you see different at 10 o'clock sharp on channel 6 news. I forgot to mention the comedy starts on the flier with 'show starts promptly at 9pm'. If you have 10 bucks and a little tolerance for a dab of tactlessness its worth checking out once.
Wanna stick it to the "the man"? What if I told you that you could do it in the comfort of your own home, on a park lawn, by yourself or with a crew of friends. What if I told you that you could and only reap the rewards of soul-inspiring fulfillment and not the affection of the INTERPOL. Sounding unreasonable? The United States premiere of the film Handmade Nation made believers out of a capacity crowd at the Oriental Theatre in Milwaukee.
Judging from the flock of movie-goers you would have thought the Dali Lama was in town. With the theatre's Buddha statues mounted on the balconies presiding, Handmade Nation written and directed by Faythe Levine and Courtney Heimerl took us on an easy ride through the winding open road of 'crafting'. HMN covers 19,000 miles worth of perspectives, traveling cross-country to interview crafters in all four corners of the continental US.
If your senses are easily overloaded this is not the film to see. HMN begins with a sentient needle scurrying across the screen, with beady friends and inky playmates, adding to the ever-morphing patchwork quilt and screen-printed background. They say you cant judge a book by its cover, but opening sequences definitely set the tone for great films in the 21st century and HMN's doesn't disappoint.
Know Thyself
What is crafting anyway? Any person engaging in this activity will be reluctant to tell you with any certainty; that would ruin the fun. In different pockets of the US, HMN documentarians asked partakers of the tactile fellowship their thoughts on crafting. Harvesting various answers, a few common threads still ran threw the craft-persons' responses each unique in the coloring and texture describing their ethics in relation to their preferred craft.
Without prompting, it became apparent that to a crafter our consumer culture is a bother and a bore. Consumerism is impersonal, mass produced, ruthless in its hoarding of resources, and most tragically mind-numbing. Fed up with corporate sales associates ringing-up cloned scarfs and greeting cards incubated on computer screens, the keepers of the crafting code urge you to stop and think before you brandish your magnetized plastic filled with money credits.
Here a distinction must be made. We're not talking about the crafting that will take you to Michael's after watching a couple of Martha Stewart episodes and cause you to break out the bedazzle gun. As HMN plays on, it's clear that transforming reality, by taking a stand against idle fingers and the capitalist big-box, requires commitment to an ethic.
On the most fundamental level the crafter, born through a series of realizations, possesses an intriguing awareness of the relationship between using your hands to interact with the materials around you and the sensation of connectedness to your habitat. This process departs from the traditional artist, likely more concerned with conveying an idea, evoking irony, or a portraying a particular aesthetic. Seeking confirmation of life's presence, the stimulation of senses provide crafters a motivating catalyst to create. The crafter removes the isolation of modern life by making things and sharing them.
The crafter locates self by eliminating the mysterious origin of objects both novel and utilitarian. Craft-culture rejects all-things paternal and challenges us to not hinder our personal maturation by standing in-line for things we want or need all the time. According to a certain social theorist, people are cooler in uptown Manhattan anyway.
Conservation Bandits
The need to conserve by recreating with the previously used is a renewable theme throughout the film. Rather than staging a workers rally, one with busy hands admits that she buys only pre-owned fabric to make her garments. Before tailoring a class piece of formal wear, another crafter contemplates the implications of cutting into a 50 year-old piece of fabric commenting, "what gives me the right to cut into this fabric?" Doing more than 'tree-hugging', a dedicated crafter uses recycled paper as the medium of choice for post cards and such, decreasing demand for felled trees. The principle is one less fiber purchased retail is one less environmentally inconsiderate product that needs to be re-stocked on the shelf.
It's not coincidental that 'Do-it-Yourself' has an activist application. Conservation is kind of like the crafters' Swiss army knife; it's a versatile instrument of change. Endearingly, crafters are willing to engage social problems on a level that departs from an annoying issue-mongers' tendency for screaming, guilt-tripping and proselytizing. Maybe we don't need another hero, we just need a bunch of tiny creative moments to make change.
The limits of conservation extend beyond physical materials to preservation of ancient methods. In one scene, a young woman teetering light-reflecting safety goggles from her nose, donning a tattered long sleeve sweater with strings dangling from the wrist and a payload of necklaces B.A. Baracas-style, ignites a blue-flamed torch a foot from her face that looks like it could melt a diamond. We soon learn that Tracy Bull of Happy Owl Glassworks is nonchalantly risking her eyebrows to preserve a 2,000 year-old glass-beading technique. Now that is hardcore.
Minute sized paper cutouts of cultural symbols and fauna are carefully whittled with an Xacto blade at the fingertips of Nikki McClure, her works are anthropological manuscripts translating bygone creative eras practiced by Chinese, African, and Middle Eastern cultures, connecting us to what our human ancestors were doing with their energy.
Expressing conservation comes not only with their chosen mediums and techniques, but also with diet. Working from the inside out, for some, tuning-in to the craft wavelength requires the compassion for all living beings expressed through vegan practices. That's how one participant entered the craft chamber, "just getting together with friends to craft and enjoy good food." That's the beauty of it. It's just that simple.
Causing a Commotion
If human interaction and conservation are not motivation enough, crafting also appeals to the inner renegade rebel in all of us. It was hippy-ness and punk rock for the younger Baby Boomers and grunge for the Gen X-ers. Now since both are well into their thirties, forties and fifties, according to the fist law of thermodynamics, that rebellious energy has to go somewhere, but where? (I'm a young Gen X-er pardon my sarcasm, it is well intended). The recent generations are not immune.
Some of my favorite parts of HMN depict deviant behavior that is decidedly anti-establishment. The proprietor of Anti - Factory stages a public contest to see who could knit the best bootleg of the Burberry pattern. Receiving many demonstrations she is able to construct hand bags that soon become popular. Take that posh name brand!
A posse of Texas knitters take the proverbial cake. With nicknames like Notorious N.I.T and J - Nitty, the group Nitta' takes crafting guerrilla. When night falls they pile into a compact economy car. Timing the precise opportunity-maximizing-moment they jump out, to stealth-bomb-knit a Technicolor muffler onto a street sign post and vanish into the night. Cleverly mocking municipal bureaucrats and graffiti artists simultaneously with a stab of the knitting needle, the least crafting can do for you is provide some amusement.
Thumping Pareto
There is a parallel story to this motion-picture look into an American subculture that adds instead of takes away from our collective wellbeing. One of the film's makers, Levine, also runs a local Milwaukee outlet called Paper Boat Boutique and Gallery, which as recently as January 30th was set to close, nearly unfathomable given the talent and drive of Levine. However, crafting economics defy the conventional wisdom of enterprise enough for an imminent shutdown to make sense.
Presenting an alternative model for business proves a little trickier than selecting the perfect place for a new hem. Shamelessly labor and input intensive, craft-based shops snub the profit-maximizing formula in favor of unconventional antics. If you see a six-foot-tall canvas cuboid resembling a vending machine inching toward you, wildly painted with small pictures on the front and a slot for stuffing in dollar bills, you might think you are on Japanese television, but know that a starving crafter just wants to make ends meet with some of his prints.
Efforts of magnitude replace economies of scale and sweat-equity won't cut it. Evidenced by a vendor's ordeal, who while embellishing one of her craft fair displays accidentally staples her index finger, badly, you have to be willing to sign your check in blood. Ensuing film frames capture a friendly neighbor arriving, without cue, to lend some clot-aiding pressure and moral support. The HMN viewer then understands that ink runs thicker than water.
The mend of the crafting community weaves together a closely packed network of individuals devoted to a common bond. HMN confirms that interaction with objects is secondary to the magic that happens when humans decide to appreciate what they agree on. The turnout to last Thursday's premiere gives an unequivocal testament to this fact. Levine and Heimerl have clearly dedicated their energies to the most deserving places. Smacking the smiles off the big yellow circle-faced end-caps that dominate our consumption habits, Levine's film makes a strong case for the premium warranted for crafter-made items.
Crafters are giving much of themselves physically and emotionally to carry alternatives to commercial-merchandise. A splurge in Handmade Nation is a tithe that sustains the availability of choices that American's crave. Their take is not so much gratitude, as just deserts. It's the only way they can stay afloat. A good amount of the film's craft fair footage takes place outside. That means you have plenty of time to plan an outing to a craft fair.
Riders of the Storm
Having a group 'collective unconscious' definitely does not preclude self-consciousness. Ironically, in the heat of the struggle to remain Indie and commercial-free, the Handmade Nation is aware that their experiment with creativity could turn on the doctor. There is a dark-side. Will the evil empire cunningly find a way to capture one of the last remaining reaches of uncharted market segments? High-end designers and retail executives need to stand down and mind their demographics. Although the odds are stacked against them, the craft guild and its admirers are a fortuitous bunch. It's up to free thinkers to bestow the social and economic capital that can keep the penny hoarders at bay.
Upcoming screenings of Handmade Nation include stops in New York's Museum of Art and Design next week, and venues in Toronto, Canada, Barcelona, Spain, Melbourne, Australia, returning to the area at Madison's Wisconsin Film Festival April 2 - 5, 2009 details TBA. Handmade Nation is also in print! Check here for the latest HMN news.
In plain view under a curved lamppost with a conical fixture beaming down light, sits an endomorphic body-type mannequin postured upright on a wooden chair at the far end of a 20-foot table; it ominously presides over the diorama scenes intermittently placed over the balance of the wooden surface. The main action of Waldek Dynerman’s Train Project lives here. Curious on lookers begin to meander towards this area like cautious deer fawn at dusk, visibility is low. Me being one of them I decide to keep my distance, the diminutive artistic elements could be sensitive to clumsy eyes or just in case that mannequin decides to stand up I will have a clear path to the exit.
Not having read the description of this event, to my recollection, I am beginning to ask myself why I came. It's all so random, even creepy. I have seen it before, weird for weird's sake. I'm from the seminal days of Riddlin prescriptions: ahem, some of us wore mental disturbance like a badge not knowing you could get labeled for it.
A man comes forth subtly, gets the group's attention with a well placed 'auuh...' and reluctantly grants us permission to sit on the floor if we preferred, or otherwise make ourselves comfortable. The gentleman wears a conservative zip-neck sweater that covers an Oxford, and aside from a slightly disheveled bush of hair is markedly non-descriptive; maybe he is the host. Expecting Marilyn Manson incarnate to ascend from the concrete floor below, the gentleman, Dynerman to my chagrin, initiates his talk.
Days of Grace
Born 6 years after the end of WWII to a Polish-Jewish father and Christian mother, Dynerman begins recounting the time period of his childhood in post-war Poland and France. "A lot of what we saw on television and in movies was about the war," as if to understate a great preoccupation of the times, "we used the German words we heard when we played our games." Sometimes Dynerman was a German soldier exhorting a courageous Pole playmate that defied the order to 'halt'. Dynerman's father was a holocaust survivor, doing so with Dynerman's grandparents by living 18 months without leaving a family friend's 10 X 10 cellar room. When the ordeal ended, he recounts that his father found none remaining from his former life and his father eventually moved to Paris where he met his mother before moving to Israel.
The picture slowly comes together during Dynerman’s discussion. The installation features multiple sculptures and miscellaneous tangible elements amply spaced on the walls, floor and on hand-made pedestals. Scanning the installation, heads, malformed torsos and eerily dismembered doll limbs slowly come to focus in the midst of small wooden shelters and platforms. However, small human figurines of laymen, by standers, and soldiers are the stars of this exhibit.
One figurine stands roughly two inches tall and is dwarfed by two quarter pieces of cinder block fused together, to form what looks like a giant high modern building on a European street corner. The figurine lonesomely steps onto a mock curb illuminated by a scaled-down model street lamp. Half-way across the room in the shadow cast behind the large endomorphic mannequin , a crowd of peach colored figurines bunches up when approached by an on coming hoard of evergreen tinted army soldiers with ranks that reach around to the lateral side of the mannequin's wooden throne.
Is any one watching? Certainly not the mannequin who is content to glare forward, certainly not the fortunate peach figurines that are watching the small LCD displays flickering pretty colors in cozy wood enclosures. He reveals that this work's subject matter is the holocaust, among other genocides as they have occurred as recently as this year.
Artist in Our Minds
A painter by trade and training Dynerman decided to deviate from his master craft into sculpture, to satisfy his want to delve into a medium with which he was always fascinated. "I always found mannequins interesting," he utters. While reflecting on his decision not to incorporate several large paintings into to the piece, he wonders into a thought about how he preferred to have a stark white background for the exhibit so that the viewer could "wash their eyes" and refresh their minds before continuing to different parts of the gallery.
His philosophy is consistent and modest. Dynerman's father and his father before him were tin craftsmen. In ode to his memories, fashioned metal street lights in various scaled-states frequently dot the dusky hall punctuating the tiny dramatic scenes in perpetual suspense. His conversation trickles English with an endearing thick native Polish-speaking accent, "I grew up around a shop so I always liked building things... the things you see here, the pedestals, the table.... are all built by hand...and when I build them I craft them to the extent that they serve the purpose that they are built for and not more." He’s right staining the woodwork would look contrived.
There is quite a bit of irony here and the use of scale is apparent in the exhibition. Located on the table opposite the seat-perched mannequin is a 3-foot-tall tin model of the Eiffel tower flanked by miniature coniferous trees. Dynerman shares that his father retained his love for Paris, even while in Israel, and constructed the model of the famous structure as a gift to Dynerman. To use the iconic landmark often revered for its invocation of love and freedom as a backdrop for his mini-theatre, is a brilliant twist on reality. "I have no sensible response," he offers when I asked if there is a deeper meaning to the use of scale in his art. "I think that somehow the viewer may have more empathy [for small doll-like figures]," his tone is somewhat playful when making this remark as if he is omitting something from a secret recipe. I think he has discovered a way to mock human cognition into choosing its own adventure instead of spoon-feeding perceptions.
For Dynerman, by his own admission, simply "painting death" seemed inappropriate. Lucky for us we are able to see Dynerman's motion picture snap-shot of the human condition projected on the adjacent wall, from the point of view of a remote-camera-equipped model train scurrying on the table behind the omnipotent mannequin, alongside the madness of the evergreen aggressors converging on innocent peach crowds, turning with the track to a straight away with a small mirror positioned like a billboard, capturing the face of the mannequin in the reflection, then futilely hustling past a neon blue filament-lit carousel that upon closer examination is housing a series of severed doll feet and legs protruding from the inner cylinder of the amusement park favorite, only to endlessly repeat the circuit as if to take the spectator on a whimsical reoccurring nightmare. If you are paying attention, it is surreal. Train Project is on display at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee Union Gallery from January 26 - February 27, 2009.
