alright alright alRIGHT alright

ode to my apartment


a regular lunataco.

orlando: week one

florida is totally strange.
It's as though all the parts and peoples were made from rubbery rubbery and hollow.
If you are looking to write a thesis on the intricacies of facade in american culture, I recommend orlando as an excellent field study. The whole place is laced with a tangible sensation of what that is.
atrocious food. Absolutely everything is a fancy facade with nothing to back it up. I suspect that I will be wearing just the front of my clothes, attached by some sort of tabs over my shoulders, by the time I return from here.

universal studios is a trip. I've been trying to take phontos of the madness. But, the crazy doesn't quite seem to be making it through the lens. There is actually a mini, faux new york city set with functional businesses in it. I go there for starbucks sometimes. All the buildings are fake two story ones and they have actually carved cracks into the sidewalks with some sort of tool. there is a delancey st and 5th ave and a weensy "central park" comprised of about four benches, a statue and a mix of real and fake shrubbery. There's also a sizable 2D painted public library complete with carved lions out front. The poetry of existence of this is not lost on me.
This cluster of blocks is just a few steps away from the "twister" building with the smoking sign and around the corner from the live filming of wrestling in the building next to ours. They block through their moves in the alleyways in all their spandexed glory. Right when I walk out of our building, I can see the Nemo ride and the dr. seuss land and the hulk roller coaster just beyond. All the buildings on our side of the fence have art deco paint schemes and big hollywood-like "Stage 34"s etc. on them. There are pieces of different rides in the alleyways and gobs of golf carts zooming around.

I'm told we can get into bunches of theme parks around for free. I'm thinking the best policy is going to be to not bother looking any further for "normal" but plug my nose and sail down that rabbit hole.

April: first half: phontos

jersey........................................path station

naked lady................................clothed man

Art vs. Common Man

Below: an experiment to see if a painting by an accomplished painter, fetching huge wads of cash for his work, could catch the attention of the average passerby.


An article in the Washington Post a year ago did a similar experiment with an extremely accomplished violinist busking in a mall. The argument that sound would have helped to get people's attention does not stand.

A wonderful send up of all sides of the argument, almost cartoonishly so, (regardless of the earnestness all participants wielded) can be found in this 80s British talk show about art featuring Leigh Bowery and some real characters both in the unappreciative studio audience as well as the stiffs arguing the case for art,
...well shit. the video has been pulled from youtube. the second part is still there though the meat of the discussion with all its "rubbish"s is missing. grr. Wonderful trilogy of discussions on a topic: dashed. Here's the second half, but you miss them all arguing about an installation of a stack of bricks and Leigh's fantastic performance singing and then giving birth to a full grown bloody, naked woman.

They're HEErrre...

Late March 2008: Phontos

Aforementioned Philosophy Post

Let's first say that I will be making absolute coleslaw of these ideas and I highly recommend checking out some of this work for yourself.

I've been reading The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts. I had a little trouble getting into it as I couldn't grock with his 'voice' initially. I felt like he was repeating the same thing over and over or then saying some huge concept and then skipping over its meaning. But, I soon found some things of interest. His basic idea is that our concepts of 'individual' and 'alone' are a myth perpetuated by language among other things. He works from a Hindu philosophy called Vedanta, which roughly says there is nothing outside of "god". I enjoyed the story he told his kids about us all being 'god' so involved in playing pretend, we've forgotten we are god.

God also likes to play hide-and-seek, but because there is nothing outside God, he has no one but himself to play with. But he gets over this difficulty by pretending that he is not himself. He pretends that he is you and I and all the people in the world, all the animals, all the plants, all the rocks, and all the stars. In this way he has strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening. But these are just like bad dreams, for when he wakes up they will disappear.

Also his discussion of the crest and valleys of existence. dark and light, life and death, are like waves, "rates of vibration", "poles or aspects of the same thing". Nothing to be afraid of. Cause and Effect also figure into this concept. He says both the "cause" and the "effect" arise simultaneously, out of necessity. One does not create the other. (Chicken or Egg? both) Everything exists in relation to everything around it. You can only see a thing in relation to what it is up against. positive and negative space. It is all the same field.

He sites a quantum theory textbook:

...the world cannot be analyzed correctly into distinct parts; instead, it must be regarded as an indivisible unit in which separate parts appear as valid approximations only in the classical [i.e., Newtonian] limit... Thus, at the quantum level of accuracy, an object does not have any "intrinsic" properties (for instance, wave or particle) belonging to itself alone; instead it shares all its properties mutually and indivisibly with the systems with which it interacts. Moreover, because a given object, such as an electron, interacts at different potentialities, it undergoes... continual transformation between the various forms... in which it can manifest itself.

And from the biophysicist Erwin Schrodinger:

Thus you can throw yourself flat on the ground, stretched out upon Mother Earth, with the certain conviction that you are one with her and she with you. You are as firmly established, as invulnerable as she, indeed a thousand times firmer and more invulnerable. As surely as she will engulf you tomorrow, so surely will she bring you forth anew to new striving and suffering. And not merely 'some day': now, today, every day she is bringing you forth , not once but thousands upon thousands of times, just as every day she engulfs you a thousand times over. For eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end.

His basic idea is that we need to realize on something more than a logical level, that we are all connected. Almost the need for a physical understanding of the energy we are all comprised of.

What floored me, upon watching this Jill Taylor talk, was how all the ideas that Alan Watts was trying to articulate back in the sixties, can be fairly neatly plopped into the function of the right hemisphere of the brain. Science caught up.
{this talk is 18 minutes long. I highly encourage taking the time to watch}


So these are the things I've been pondering. The closest I got to any real understanding was during a fairly brutal session of kinetics a couple months ago. And was I lay there, suffering, I was struck by the lack of time and space and distance. I was every person who's ever lived. An abstracted, condensed version of the total human experience. I laughed.

Subcultures, their uniforms and their histrionics

I came across both of these facts a couple days ago. Apparently, there are riots in the streets of mexico between "emos" and "punks". I can't understand all of the broadcast. I get a "punk' saying something about "they're copying our style". A friend suggests that they're just teenagers blowing off steam. I find it staggering. The similarities between the two groups are many more than the differences. Both have intense devotion to a musical genre, some flavor of angsty world view that goes along with it and a rigid wardrobe and hairstyle scheme. (The strict rules of 'cool' have always been in opposition to the 'rebellion' it touts). All the more well matched, I suppose. A sort of civil war; brothers probably know the best ways to get their brothers in a tizzy. Music and style have overcome world politics in terms of what will get people out on the streets hollering at each other.

The very same day, I was reading a chapter in Boorstin's book 'The Creators' (an entire history of humankind's creation; creation myths to picasso. I've been chipping away at it for three years). This chapter was about Goethe and his first smash hit "The Sorrows of Young Werther". This book not only made him a lit-star but touched off an absolute craze in Germany at the time. The story of this passionate young melancholy chap offing himself drove hordes of people to dress like him in the signature pale blue coat and yellow trousers. The ladies could collect china telling the story in pictures and wear themed jewelery. (apparently there were a fair amount of copy-cat suicides too). I'm not sure if those Werther-lovers ever went up against other sub-sects of sturm and drang literary fans or not. But, I can't help but see the roots of emo and goth and punk and indie rock and their devotees in this. Amazing that something based on so much mopey-ness can breed such communal action. Perhaps political leaders should pay more attention to their clothing style and theme music, the merchants have known the importance of that sort of thing for ages.

T-Shirt Deadline

Stop the Gene Wilder Remakes!

The order is officially going in on wednesday (tomorrow).

You send request, sizes, shipping address-I send paypal invoice
- You send monies -I send you shirt(s)

vaganthead (at) gmail (dot) com

Gallery Opening

pure magic (courtesy of friend's incredibly fucked up camera phone, except for that last one. which I tried to match with the first two)

.....fig. 1...........................fig. 2..............................fig. 3.....

fig. 1: the artist with mr. weatherspoon's nefrotittyafroditie.
fig. 2: the gallery mascot, polly.
fig. 3: the artist with the Artist.(courtesy of ms. allison)

S O L - I - T U D E - A: a medley

Ah, life experience.
I am coming to the end of a four month period (with a juicy five week hiatus in toronto) of fairly intense solitude. Sort of my stab at doing a "Thoreau"(no tv, no cell reception, no people, lots of internet). Not for the fucking faint of heart. I'll save the particulars for the poetry tome. (alone... seclusion... dilluuuuuusionn)
Meantime, I've gathered some other folks' meditations on the subject:
.....................................................

The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.
- Pearl S. Buck


I love people. I love my family, my children . . . but inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that's where you renew your springs that never dry up.
- Pearl S. Buck

.....................................................


.....................................................


Garfield without Garfield: genius. In addition to being an excellent depiction of the pathetic human condition, it is also rendered gorgeously with all that silence. go look at all of them.





.....................................................

I would add, by way of soothing the ache, david byrne has a really nice collection of jazz on his radio right now. there's something about Monk, that makes me feel human.

.....................................................

COMING SOON: My Philosophy Post! or What I Have Learned!

Movies I Approve of:

#73.1 - A HAWK AND A HACKSAW - Part 1 by lablogotheque

This is what life is all about.

MOVIE RECOMMENDATIONS:

Helvetica:





I adore Helvetica. I am probably the target/wet dream audience as I am an unschooled graphic designer-wannabe. (I am also a color-namer, EMT and luge-r wannabe, so...)
Perhaps it was all those little steel type set letters my mom had in her knick-knack case growing up, but that intro bit with the typesetting ranks with the opening credits of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (gene wilder version thankyouverymuch(subscribe for your t-shirt here)) as the purest of visual porn in title sequences of all time (if that sequence of the orange crayons getting made on mr. rogers would qualify, that too). I absolutely gasped at certain sections. When that man explained how he made grids and then drew and arranged letters. Revelation.

I am a typeface appreciator. (also chocolate, and I'll add music to the list) Things I adore that I lack the skills to make myself..


Be Kind Rewind:





I adore Be Kind Rewind. Gondry keeps doing all my ideas before I get a chance. Some kids were inspired to "swede" star wars. So awesome. See it now.


Also:




Genghis Blues (Tuvan throat singing makes me cry), Chuck Jones: Extremes and In-Betweens (Brilliant Genius man), Live Free or Die (excellent recreation of a meld of about 20 different kids I grew up with)

Somebody needs to make a really awesome movie about Richard Feynman. Gotta see if I can find that doc we saw in 10th grade science class...

Also, I made a Film/Video Production Reel that can be seen here. I'm working on (or rather avoiding working on) one for the performance stuff...

Stop the Gene Wilder Remakes Page + Timely News

I threw up a quick page for this {yarfff... splat} HERE

lots of interest. big ol' learning curve. It's gonna be awesome.
...............................................................
wow. talk about timely:

new york post today
time magazine today

The Gene Wilder Conspiracy: t-shirts will happen!

AFTER READING THIS INTELLIGENT, MOUTH-FOAMY RANT, CHECK OUT SHIRTS NOW AVAILABLE AT WIREANDTWINE.COM. . GET YOUR T-SHIRTS. TUBULAR.

What. is. with. remaking all of the genius gene wilder movies? What?!? I ask you.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Producers, and now Young Frankenstein is on broadway. The Producers went the broadway and THEN to the SCREEN. Stop the madness, I say. What's next? Blazing Saddles?
Gene Wilder is amazing. Peoples need to stop marker-ing over his work with sub-par shit, or rather anything at all.
Go rent one of these films or, better yet, go convince your local art house movie theatre to do a retrospective.

{oh my god I think I'm making t-shirts...}

{yep... I'm making t-shirts}



{no, there's really NOT a more efficient use of my time at this particular moment...}

....................................................................................


Okay, so here goes:
If you feel the gene-wilder-love and want a t-shirt like-such-as the above, contact (vaganthead@gmail.com, size too) and I will take subscriptions and get a printing done. I'm thinking about $15 + shipping.
If you're not sure, go watch the original and the new charlie and the chocolate factory back to back and get back to me.

ORDER GOES INTO THE SHOP MIDWEEK! GET YOUR ORDERS IN BETWIXT NOW AND THEN.
paypal info forthcoming for interested parties.

Thanks for your interest! Such love for the Gene!

{UPDATE: First guerilla style limited edition printing of these shirts went from worrying about making the 12 t-shirt minimum to receiving orders in my inbox from word of mouth that stretched around the world. Printing is now placed in the able hands of the kind folks at wireandtwine.com where the movement is still growing!}

Fall 08 Ready to Wear: expert analysis

Let me first say, there was a whole lot of 'who cares' in these collections this season. too much black, too much same-trend-as-last-year-tweaked-slightly, not enough effort to discover some new things.


THE TRENDS or HOW THE GREAT FASHION DESIGNER COPY ME:
Lots of plaids and plaids mixed with plaids, plaids with unusual palettes. That's so me. Many many designers showed some plaid. I feel totally ripped off.

Next, the warm rosy reddish chocolaty browns and rusty tomato vermilion reds. Yup, that's me too. I originally stole the idea from costumes in old esther williams movies and then thought it should be amped up in intensity. voila, exhibit a, b, c, d, e and f.

.....elie saab, allegra hicks, akris, galliano,victor + rolf, lacroix......

SURPRISING NEW THINGS:
Lacroix scored huge points for having a great many cocktail dresses with pockets. gold star.

I liked the drama of Berardi's pieces with parachuting fabric expanding out from a tight slim dark silhouette.

Galliano tackling wealthy middle-americana for Dior. So incredible to throw that tacky rich barbie look back in our faces and somehow make us still want it.

"Look look. It's hideous, isn't it?"
- mmhmm -
"But you still want it don't you?"
- {headnod} *blubber* -

There is a lot of this concept in oodles of designers of poking the arm holes farther up in the garment so it's all cape-y and billowy at the back. But, Junya Watanabe's suit adaptations were most interesting, in my opinion. I would like to see what they look like in motion.

And, of course, the boys at Victor & Rolf can be counted on for some strange twist. This time, "NO" popping out of garments in 3D and in sequins. I thought it was a spiffy message after seeing the parade of craptastic drivel that came before.

..........lacroix, berardi, dior, junya watanabe, victor+rolf...........


AND THE BLUE RIBBON GOES TO...:
Dolce + Gabbana pulled it out in spades this season. The palette was gorgeous, the textures were incredible, very wearable, and they stole that whole vintage-scarf-at-the-neck thing from me. That three piece suit is my most favoritest thing of all. Also that sort of barbarian princess evening gown is pretty awesome and unexpected.

Thakoon is the runner up. Nice, similar palette. more plaids. They opted for a more gauzy gray in their neckerchiefs. There were also sequins involved which I liked.

................................dolce + gabbana................................

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
As punishment for jumping the gun on the done-ness of fashion week, I will say nice things about those collections that were omitted in my haste.


.........lanvin, vuitton, vuitton, nina ricci, miu miu, miu miu.........

Both lanvin and louis vuitton should be commended for their bugged out structuring without being gratuitous. Mr. Jacobs is also to be commended for making everything look like white russian or pistachio ice cream. He is forgiven for reusing the silly black "hat" thing. And if I must have a black dress, that one's mighty pretty. Nina Ricci had an interesting palette and set of prints that left a necrophiliac sensation. I think the new goth has been discovered; romantic in a rotting corpe-y kind of way. And as far as miu miu, I'm around a 6-8 and will accept whatever is given me.

Success

I just successfully submitted a letter-o-inquiry for a mongo grant to fund making a touring solo theatre piece.
cross your fingers and toes...

Show and Tell

fig.1................................fig.2(top)............................fig.3


fig.1 : This is a link to a project a friend has made using beautifully scarred film footage of me wiggling around in sequins. It's puuuurdy.

fig.2 : This is a beautifully scarred phonto of a new big piece I'm working on for the show that is giving me ass-ache onaccounta the paper is too thick. I may need to build a light unit for it. grr.

fig.3 : This is what it looks like when my face freezes off.


full fashion week run down forthcoming...

the face of progress

framed one..................................................four prints done






beard envy................................mass ave bridge phonto movie


* two days left of whiskerino {tear}
* I'm on last.fm
* some pithy comments by some people I don't know
on "some crazy bitch in a tub"

squish

In the coming posts, we have to look forward to:

my wrap up of fall 08 ready to wear.
it's promising to be quite truncated as I can't be bothered to focus on such unimaginative drivel as I've seen so far.
{that's right, sisters, drivel}

A new bony lil video.
I haven't shot it yet but I'm sure thinking about it while playing nerdy online games involving frogs and tangled wads of strings.

maybe some sneak-peaks of the block prints I'm doing for my friends' store.
that remains to be seen. three down, seven to go.

News that I successfully submitted for a mongo grant by deadline.
again, with the frogs and strings.

sneak-peaks of new pieces that will go in the new york show.
once I shake off the crippling heartache of my imperfection.


so, generally, lots to look forward to,
right after I finally get to the fourth level on that frog thing...

Gray Shallows Unleashed

Here's my baby. The music video for the upcoming 'Gong Lake' album by my friends, Neptune. Go see them on tour. They are the awesomest love.

watch it big on their site.

Stateside

I have returned.

Spent an hour building levees with the plastic snow shovel this morning to prevent the driveway from icing over later. My sweater smells musty from the pink slicker I found in the closet. I've eaten too many cookies in the last 18 hours.
Sweet sweet country living.

Big things in the works.

Check the gallery show @ right (manhattan, baby. what?!)

I'll post the Neptune video shortly.

Freelance full speed ahead. Will animate for wads of cash.
Send those Sugar 'Rents my way.
..............

A Selected Tour

Kensington Market as an intriguing place. It's primarily a one and two story funky converted residential area loaded with ethnic grocers, produce vendors, gobs of vintage clothing stores and the occasional restaurant and cafe. There are some pretty wild paint jobs on houses/stores which is awesome, but somehow, more awesome was that as a wended my way through the various health stores and mystery shops I came across no less than four establishments pumping reggae into the street. Mind you, it was excruciatingly freezing that day. I liked it.

The last photo is from a production of Alice Wonderland on stilts I saw at the winter festival here, Winter City. The spectacle of costumed characters wading above crowds of folks was neat to see {that a huge, two-story singing lady on the left}. Unfortunately the intrigue ends there. I found it hard to get involved in any sort of story. I did only see the latter half, so I may have missed some magic in the beginning. My favorite part was all the gloved clapping at the end. What a great sound.

2 Photos, A Doodle + A Dance/Cultural Project

There is a whole pile of malarky that goes along with this piece. You can click on the title to go to the vimeo page to read it. Otherwise, if you own a copy of this song, load it up and there will be a:
'ready' 'set' 'start' to sync your song with the visuals.

This is based on an interest in copyright + internet as well as dance performance with headphones that started a bunch of years ago which got reinvigorated by this:



and by the robots on their way to work in the mornings in toronto.

Adventures in Clown and Canada

prequel: So there was this chick. Stage performance was her main deal from age 5 to 18 (when some horrible thing or other led her to believe not only that spending over 100,000 smackers on a degree in a field where one can be turned down for lack of desired nose shape, was unwise, but the whole idea of performance as a career might be silly). Since that day, there has been a smattering of toes in waters, a sporadic joining of a dance troupe or three, the occasional vaudeville piece {perhaps to understate the matter}. And now, after all that time, back to the realization that that silliness is the most happy-making thing and also the absolute horror that it may be too late to entertain the notion of a career shift. Plans are made. Jobs are quitted. Personal belongings stored. So this chick in her third decade quits her day job and moves away from most of her friends to go to clown school; to take certain things more seriously.

transit day: I cannot tell you the histrionics of my digestive system. Such nerves. such waves of queasiness. eating breakfast was out of the question as every weensy bite of oatmeal was almost unswallowable. as divine assistance was given by the bestest of friends, getting out the house, packed, into the car, on our timely way to the train station was accomplished. There were no thoughts of changing plans, just wishing my stomach would stop hurting. queasiness gave way to dizziness. The train came. I got on. one hour of sleep and no breakfast under my belt. I cracked the first smile of the day. The absolute devastation of doing exactly what you want to do.

day one: Fuck aerobics. I spent four hours with an elevated heart rate, doing and watching/anticipating group and solo exercises in a clown workshop. Trying to excel. Trying to be the best when that's not really an option. I mix both the words of the teacher and some male actor my friend was telling me about when I say, I am learning to fail better when failure is out of the question. Clown lives somewhat in failure and how it's handled. I have invested a hefty amount in this endeavor, terrified I don't have what it takes. Terrified I will have no choice but to go back to washing the sweaty socks of performers, handing them props in the wings. No one caring to see me do the one thing that makes me most joyful. Failure would be fairly devastating.
Fortunately, judging from the first day, this will be a fruitful exercise. I trust that the teaching skills are there, I just need to hold up my end of the bargain. Investment, I have. Talent, arguable. The skill to learn skill, I fucking hope so. I can't wait for tomorrow's class.

some different days after that first one: Things are going well. Not nearly so much laughing as you might think. Tears seem more prevalent. Everybody is working hard. Everyday is a new adventure. I'm getting settled into the place I'm staying and getting around town more easily. What they say about Canadians and politeness is true. Holy crap, so neighborly. But after the shock has worn off a bit and I've readjusted my vocal volume for public places, (it's true, what they say about loud-mouth Americans. Surprisingly, I am one) I look at the sea of space-sharing, neatly framed faces and I notice they are all deadpan. Not so much as a person bopping to their headphones. eerie.

So, I'm living the dream. and I'm loving it. I get pissy and frustrated with my limitations some days, but generally I am in awe of life's ability to provide when one sets sights on something.
huzzah.