im: How do you really feel about Osama? Gerry: I'd hang out with him. im: What would you do? Gerry: I'd ask him to get me opium and we'd talk about indoor plumbing. im:What do you think is better? Their plumbing or their opium? Gerry: The opium dude. And the hash. im: How do you think he feels about Al Sharpton? Gerry: I think they share some of the same views. im: What do you think they'd say about their fashion sense? Gerry: I think Osama would say that just because 'Sharp' is in your name dosen't mean you push it. im: So you think he's tryin to hard with the perm? Gerry: Yeah, and he tries to get on T.V. all the time. im: Dosen't Osama try to get on T.V.? Gerry: Not as much as Al Sharpton.
24 hours and three weeks before I saw an exhibition organized by James Cordas and a group of musicians, artists and hangers-on like me, I met James at a house party in a worn-out converted San Francisco high rise hotel. After the party we stumbled to his apartment above Ellis Street in the Tenderloin and he showed me Bread, hanging in his wall.
Three days later James asked if I could help him carry some records to a bar where he was dj-ing. The place was owned by a woman named Ling who liked the art student money so much she let anyone with tight jeans and manicured hair play whatever they wanted until people stop showing up. She expected James and his partner to play top forty hip hop tracks, she got the Animals and Wu Tang Clan instead.
Owners of Tenderloin dive bars have other things to worry about. Two drunken tourist walked in with cuts weeping on their hands. I was chatting with about his peculiar affliction synaesthesia, sound as color when I saw them. The owner scared them off without much effort, her thin little strips of vascular muscle projected high pitched threats of castration over the music and a pool cue waved in the air. James looked up but just for a second and bought me a beer and tried to cram the concept of melodic yellow in beer bleached grey matter.
That is how James's paintings and installations function aesthetically the senses blend like the limited concepts of genre; pop-art fused with an abstract expressionist angst; stark and once playful; like the word Bread deconstruction semiotically and dangled like a banner of meaninglessness at the head of the canvas reassembled into new constructs.
On another canvas covered in clippings from vintage porn magizines; moments of grimy coitus, over miniaturized musical notes in this piece called a five year old and a negro spiritual. Layering colors and mindscapes like, creating with from found detritus, a new thing and thought in a style somewhere in the vein of Billy Apple, Sir Peter Blake and Derek Boshier.
For him the sensory identifiers become a language, fold into one another so the world is a collection of dynamic sensation. It is these sensations that James relays to the viewer through the canvas. Its not the ham-handled expressionism American art schools churn out along with $100,000 diplomas. There is a spirit of active adventure and wonder that keeps the work honest. The kind of honest that can only to late binge paint and bitter beer drinking and bloody hand prints on the door of a bathroom stall.
After being terrified by the snail's pace and action vacuum of the first three episodes of the Devil may Cry Anime series, it’s good to see the fourth episode Rolling thunder pay off like a busted slot machine full dollar coins, drink tokens, condoms, and slutty girl phone numbers.
There’s more action in this episode than all of the other combined and enough action to make Milla Jovovich wish she could get walk on, as stomping cameo.
Unfortunately the continuity of the plot doesn’t come into much consideration, but that okay because as a trade off you get to see Trish and Lady trying to kill each other with ridiculously powerful weapons, destroying a church in the process, while the main character sits lackadaisically behind his desk bickering with a creepy and superfluous little girl.
Ron Paul, one of the many republican nominees for the presidency in 2008, may be at least as intelligent as Giuliani. Trust me, the Dr. Paul (real doctor not fake ass church doctor) looks horrifying on paper; a republican representative form Texas vs. the republican bad boy hero from New York. But, if you look close, in terms specific issues Rudy Giuliani comes off like a jabbering monkey, saying things like "No matter how you try to blame it on the president, the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough?" (In response to the lost explosives in the Al Qa'qaa high explosives controversy).
Ron Paul, the candidate from TEXAS, said "All initiation of force is a violation of someone else's rights, whether initiated by an individual or the state, for the benefit of an individual or group of individuals, even if it's supposed to be for the benefit of another individual or group of individuals. Legitimate use of violence can only be that which is required in self-defense." in response to a question about military intervention into places like Iraq, while Giuliani referred the future of the war in Iraq as being something "in the hands of other people".
But don't go off and vote for Ron Paul, he's bat shit crazy, seriously and full of good old fashion, southern bible belt insights like, "Racists believe that all individuals who share superficial physical characteristics are alike: as collectivists, racists think only in terms of groups. By encouraging Americans to adopt a group mentality, the advocates of so-called "diversity" actually perpetuate racism. Their obsession with racial group identity is inherently racist." By Ron Paul's logic attempts at unifying Americans of differing ethnic groups is equatable to joining the KKK.
It finally happened. I found religion. I have a new God and his Name is Kira. He’s in his early 20’s and a Japanese detective and supernatural killer. Kira is the protagonist of writer Tsugumi Ohba’s (A.K.A Hiroshi Gamou) and Illustrator Takeshi Obata’s Series Death Note. For the benefit of the reader I should explain that after watching Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and spending another month waiting to not like Transformers the movie,I decided that lfe was no longer worth living and devised a way to take Joel Schumacher and Dick Cheney with me into an enivitable, hellish death-spiral of depression and suicide. But then Death Note came and cradled me in it’s black bossom, and I came to know the love of Kira. Kira posses the Death Note, a note book that kills once person real name is written on its pages. In most anime series the Death Note probably wouldn’t be used much, and when it was some inane circumstance would stop it from working (fucking Dragon Ball-Z..fucking Spirit bomb…FUCKING GOKU!!) but not in this series. In fact by the second episode Kira, whose real name is Yugami light, starts killing criminals like a Texas governer on a coke benige during an election year. Yugami Light’s ultimae goal is to make the world where anyone who deviated from his idea of morality and ethics would face instaneous death; sort of like the way the U.S. views Canada and Mexico and Panama, Urguay, Brazil…etc, only more effective and less dickish. Circumcnstances surrounding the lives of Death Note’s creators explain the cryptic, David Lynch on acid, Velvet Goldmind-like, quasi sexual, reverse Uusal Suspects feel of the show. The aurthor Tsugumi Ohba (A.K.A Hiroshi Gamou) Is either a hyper inteligent bodiless Japanese entity created by crossing the D.N.A. Akira Kirosowa and alien D.N.A., or Hiroshi Gamou the creative mind behind this . Mangaka Takeshi Obata, a fasionista with an eye for mod style which rivals the band Televison, France,Daft punk, and all the hipsters you know, was recently arrested when Japanese officials a nine inch long knife in his car. After considering these facts, watching an ubsured amount of fan subs, (Japanese episodes subtitled by english speaking fans) and learning about the up and coming realease of Death Note on DVD; I conclude that: A. all the horibble events leading up until I saw Death Note were divine providence. B. Tsugumi-san and Takeshi’san are profits of Kira. And C. That I am now charged with the glorious privilige of spreading the word of Kira and beseeching my new god to include the names Puff Daddy, Brendon Urie, Will Smith, and Andy Dick in the ring of names penned in the Death Note. Go forth and worship Kira, the The Prophet has spake….errr spokeneth!!
Bill Willingham’s Fables is the type of thing the Grim Brothers would have written if they lived in the Bronx doing bong rips while watching The Daily Show on Hulu. The book is smart because it knows that Little Red Riding-hood has more to do with hymens and patriarchy than hiking safety and taxidermy.
Willingham is not afraid of dealing with messy questions like:
how a frog is supposed to handle courtly life and executing criminals.
Why a grown man make wooden boy instead of a perfectly good set of mahogany wives?
How damaged were Hansel and Gretel after they pulled each other out of the rubble of the witches house and what was her name anyway?
In Fables the hard nosed cop's troubled past involves eating people, so Willingham puts the character next to the ones that got away and the relatives of the ones that didn't. He also makes sure that Prince Charming faces the reality of his silly name, his douchey personality, and the realization that he is just a narrative tool and that his name is on the stab and neuter list of most of Fabletown's female inhabitants.
Fables is a story of immigrants so it takes place in New York. Like any thriving ethnic group the characters of Fabletown have there own borough and they want to keep the mundys out.
Willingham includes fables from Africa, India and other places outside of the European rehash we've come to accept and regurgitate. There is a constant theme of cultural atom smashing, with character's who speak four languages and bigots both fantastic and mundane.
Like Neil Gaiman and Mike Carey, Williingham has rescued our myths from the tomb of academia and the sanatoriums rectally fixated Jungian psycho therapy. The tension and the neurotic mood of the series keeps it relevant.
People forget that the wolf ate grandma, how the witch screamed as Gretel stoked the fire, how Mowgli fought to kill Shere Khan or how Bluebeard's secret room ran red with the blood of his dead wives.
In the world of Fables we mundys are the lucky ones. We can launder our legends from a distance, wash off the blood in soapy omission. But Fables can not do that and are forced to be the interesting ones the freaks. With Fables Willingham has achieved folkloric realism.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
On June 6, 2007 A German man attempted to bum rush the Pope-mobile during a procession through St. peters Square. The assailant was quickly apprehended by Vatican authorities while the Pontiff, blissfully unaware of the occurrence, continued to wave his way through the square.
Could the events in Rome involving the pope and unidentified man who attempted to cross a blockade to reach the pontiff on June 6th be evidence of a loss of trust in the Catholic church? And is the Church, on the heels of a various scandals, prepared for further attacks on its reputation?
According to the authorities the man had no intention of hurting the Benedict. Being in a state of psychotic panic, the man was only trying to attract attention to himself using the Holy father as a Proxy.
Initially, there was a lot of speculation about the reasoning behind the man actions. Some thought that the attempt was politically motivated. Some take offence to the Pope's history as a Nazi Youth, others think that he has been to lenient with Catholic priest accused of molestation.
The the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles has decided to pay out $660 USD to molestation victims, in response to the surge in claims against the Church. Some have viewed this move as a full omission of guilt on the part of the papacy. while others consider it the first steps in mending the breach in trust that have rocked the Church
The Catholic Church has played down much of the criticism fired at Benedict since he has taken the position left vacant by Pope John Paul II. But, there has been no shortage of activist and media pundits digging into the new Pope's past.
I’ve only seen these paintings through the digital blockade; email, info dumps, rich text renders, and the like. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Between the syringes and through the digital eye I was able to make connection I might have glanced over; but as in everything the little goblins called details scratched on to the surface; scrapped at my awareness and gave me more than the painting may have intended.
It works like that, the paint, as if the intention doesn’t come from the hand of the artist, but from the agenda of the piece itself, but there’s nothing mystical. Just the place where Idea, composition, and reality meet and decide that peace is impossible.
One element of the painting is field a pattern of floating purple syringes laid out over jellied squares and rectangles; interlocked by fuzzy connections, like neural axons. In between the coins and jelly grids are painted golden coins ringed in blue and red, and it is all seen from an aerial perspective; god looking down on the city in 1986.
I saw this raw and unapologetic study in dimensions, muted colors, and claustrophobia under the halogen lights of a supermarket where several people had installed a guerilla gallery opening; armed with nails, hammers, a cell phone, and time.
I should have been unimpressed but this piece entitled egg=head ( as well as several others in the as yet unnamed Charcoal series by Holly Labus) created it's own divergent atmosphere as it was approached, locking the eye in a collection of shadowed and bold lines that create the sort of evocative space and subconscious memories anthropologist often say they see in cave paintings.
But this piece is charcoal graphite, not paint and its feel is not primitive but subconsciously evocative like a good myth done in black and shades of grey. The oval shape carries symbolic shades; the two most prominent: the egg; a thing of alien fertility distant but internalized in the mammalian mind, and the head; the seat of consciousness and confrontation, in other words the human confrontation with the mind.
However, we see that the inside of the (inverted?) oval is vacant or empty, reminisant of a cage or a womb. The other pieces in this series carry the same atmospheric weight as egg=head without being repetitious.
im: How do you really feel about Osama? 
