I dreamt I was pigeon slipping through the heavens like a 747

I'm incredibly bad at writing new year's resolutions and worse about keeping them. I'm always trying to come up with a new way to phrase it: Focuses for the Year; This Will be the Year of...; Themes for 2007; etc etc. This year I think it's Five year Plans for 2009 (I'm as likely to meet my goals as Lenin was right?)

~Five Year Plans for 2009
-Make a final decision about whether I want to get a second bachelors before I apply to the Masters program at KU and make a plan of what I need either way.

-Join gym, actually go to gym on regular basis.

-Stop letting work-burnout suck energy outside of work too.

Actually I'm going to stop there because that's the really important one and sort of everything else I'd like to do is all tied up in that. I'm a self-admitted workaholic and I just happen to work somewhere that exploits that fact for all it's worth and has done its best to make me feel guilty about every effort I have made to prevent burnout due to putting work before everything else in my life, so now I'd say I was on the precipice of being burnt out, and I haven't done anything creative in ages, I only seem to read technical books and I really need to stop the cycle.

Here are the things I'm planning to push myself to do this year:

-Buy sewing machine, start sewing again.
-Read 25 fiction books at minimum
-Try at least one new recipe on each of my weeks to cook
-Join the PrintMaker's Guild and do a few prints if not an edition book
-Attend at least 5 gallery openings
-Post a new blog entry here at least once a week
-buy one album (either physical or on itunes) a week
-learn to make a quilt
-pick up embroidery again
-Take the GRE by this time next year.
-Lose at least 25 pounds.

Coming soon...

Early resolution for 2009, start posting regularly again, both here and on Post.Modern.Mouse. I know blogging is on the outs, but I've never been too concerned with being cool.

dreams of restless clouds

I finally have in my mind exactly what I'd like to do for a solo show. It seems so daunting though, not just all I need to create to have the pieces (as I have noting but their forms in my brain) but all the expense, and most of all the pitch to get it exhibited once it's done. It's there in my head now though, so one day it will be. I'll incorporate some prints, but the heart of it is back to my first medium. Film. I may have to transfer it to a digital format in the end, but I want to buy a bolex and do it proper. I also have grand dreams of building kinetoscopes. Maybe I'll end up being as I should have been all along, the offbeat animator buried inside.

In other news, my wrist is getting worse. I fell outside my building about a month and a half ago. I skinned up my knee and my wrist has hurt when I bend it at a 90 degree angle (hand up) ever since. I don't think I even caught myself with my wrist so I'm not sure what I did, but it seems to be getting worse and now hurts when I bend it 90 degrees the other direction and it gets stiff when I'm driving. It's my right hand so it's rather a pain.

never going to be popular, but possibly the only art that's going to change us

Too many people, I think, think that the purpose of art is to look pretty, and that things that are ugly and inhumane or really at their depths show us the ugly and profane and inhumanness of humanity are not art. I saw that there's a facebook group to protest an artist whose art installation was a sick, starving and dying dog tied to a gallery wall. Many people apparently claim that the dog did starve to death, but other reports are that the dog was merely a very ill looking stray, was fed regularly while the exhibition wasn't open and escaped back to the streets after a few days. Either way a lot of people claim that this isn't art, just some sick inhumane man getting sport off an animals suffering. Really? Didn't this man's turning a spotlight on the miserable lives of stray animals? Didn't it pose intriguing questions about the nature of people who view the suffering and obviously pitiable condition of a living thing which was less fortunate, not of their own caste (situation) and whose condition that they could at any time have done something to improve (untied the rope and removed the dog to food and a vet) but chose not to because their interest was only served to look and pity and never to act? That methaphorically that dog was not only a dog, but the poor, the ill, the disenfranchised, the persecuted in any society whose lives we could all easily improve and show compassion for, but don't because to take action we would have to act differently than the rest of the group?

And what of the people who sign these petitions decrying the artist, so maybe some of them donate a couple of bucks to a charity for strays in Central America, do any of them really get what the artist was saying, would they really care about the dog or other dogs like him if it weren't for this man's exhibit? Would they even know about the plight of strays in Central America in the first place? Would they have taken time to look for a charity to give to if not for the way that this exhibit provoked them and challenged them to look outside their idea that somehow everyone on earth cared enough about stray dogs to save them from conditions that were deplorable?

The point of art is to challenge our notions, to give us sometimes surprising insights into things we over-looked or took for granted about things. It's to affect us in some way and say something. It is not merely to look pretty and show us the good and beautiful things. Personally I am absolutely convinced that this man's work is a piece of art. If it horrifying and ugly and repellent? Sure. Of course it is, but so is the fact that everyday millions of dogs and cats live that horrible existence and no one even looks at them let alone tries to save them. Here is a man who says, hey, don't ignore this dog, see how he is suffering. (though I do seriously hope that the reports that the dog was fed when the gallery was closed are true, sometimes you don't need the utmost of reality to get your point across.) Plus, Animal Planet makes a pretty penny in advertising $ with all their Animal Cops shows where viewers just sit and watch images of horrible animal cruelty so that they can get a jolt from saying how much they can't believe anyone could treat an animal like that and sometimes get a cathartic release seeing the person responsible arrested. It's not quite the same as standing there watching a dog suffer, but it's still a voyeuristic and somewhat sick form of entertainment.

In the end the ugly, nasty, and confrontation provoking art is probably the only art that has the power to change the world. We fight over its right to exist at all and yet we're never going to save ourselves and others from looking at a bowl of fruit and some flowers.

Opera and opining

After a week of being easily angered over enviro-issues, I've decided I'm just not going to let myself be negative over self-congratulatory celebs (you missed, lucky you, me ranting about how un-filled with gushing praise for Leonardo DiCaprio actually practicing what he preached for a second and buying a multi-million dollar green condo I was) negative green-scenesters, or even how I think Method's new toilet bowl cleaner is slowly staining my bowl with blue streaks after just one use. Yes, if I wasn't so over-exposed to those "Keep Calm and Carry On" posters etc. I'd adopt it as m new motto.

Anyway I've started working on my new project, a jewelry rack for my necklace collection. I'm painting a bit of plywood (ok it's not a bit, it's like 2'x2', but Home Depot didn't have any smaller pieces of the right thickness)white with a grey and black design (I haven't decided what yet, but I saw a cross section of a petrol tree phloem the other day and I love the lines.) Then I'm going to screw cup hooks in to hold the necklaces and bracelets.

I went to the new staging of Aida that Opera Omaha just opened last night. They seem to be very into concept shows of late, which to be honest I think is pretty awesome. It's nice to see them taking artistic risks and pushing some boundaries (even though I wish that they didn't tend to show the same couple of well-trod operas in rotation. I swear I've seen at least 5 Carmens by now.) I really like the new staging, I was definitely interested to see that the dance during the celebration of the defeat of the Ethiopians was turned into more of a representation of the love triangle than the actual battle. All of the leads had perfect voices, but it's a shame that there seemed to be really poor sound design in general as especially during the first act there were huge dead spots where the mikes didn't pick up anything and the singers voices were swallowed into oblivion. This was especially disappointing during at least one scene where you couldn't hear Radames voice at all. The set design was hit or miss for me. I'd read an article in the paper about what the designer was trying to do with scale, and I think it's in the right direction and I loved that it was far more minimal than the set of the last production of Aida with it's giant gilt eagle, however I didn't really appreciate the black Egyptian lotus design on the columns, nor the massive white Lotus that formed another set and which looked like it was made out of cardboard frankly. I also felt that the altar monument looked far too Asian, and looked like it was built out of cheap plywood, which is hardly indicative of an altar to an Egyptian god. I did, however, love the use of the altar in the final scene as well as the giant archway that looked like abstracted tree branches at the Temple of Isis.

What I didn't think lived up to their job were the costumes. I didn't like them at all. They didn't seem harmonious with ancient Egypt, they seemed to fight for attention, looked awkward and ill-fitting, created ugly forms. The dancers looked like they just stepped off the set of an Ester Williams movie. Radames looked like he was wearing black Levis jeans under his tunic, Amneris's costume didn't fit in at all with any of the others and looked like it had been borrowed at the last second from a show set in Victorian times. Yuck all around. (and by the way I have it from members of the cast, at least some of them were created with fabrics that wrinkle so easily and badly that the cast was outlawed from sitting down in them or draping them over chairs as it would ruin them, which if you ask me is not a very practical design for a staging that they're trying to sell to other Opera companies)

So all in all, it was a good production, if you ignore the costumes, and the cast makes it worth seeing. I just don't know about it being a staging for the ages.

Is creating things really so bad?

So I read on Apartment Therapy today that a couple of big name designers, namely Phillip Stark, are running around bemoaning how they're single-handedly destroying the planet through their design careers and their enablement of mass consumerism; claiming they're going to quit and give up and a bunch of other green-frenzied hogwash. Give me a break, seriously. Not only do I find these headline-grabbing, born-again-green chest thumping to be pretty much entirely disingenuous and nauseating, but I'm getting tired of hearing about how anything that's not completely utilitarian and made from bamboo is the root of all evil. Perhaps it's that as an artist it kind of irritates me that somehow art, or things that are created sheerly for aesthetics are bad, and the cause of all the environmental ills in the world. There's nothing wrong with creating things for sheer aesthetics, there's nothing wrong with buying cool, or pretty or decorative things, it's not destroying everything. What the real problems are is people who view everything as disposable and buy everything put in front of them only to toss it when the trends change. The problem is cheap, low-quality crap, not good design. We all love product porn and have hundreds of covets every year in the consumer sphere, but we don't have to buy it all. I admit I quite unashamedly maintain a shopping blog, full of stuff I'd love to buy, but only occasionally will (or rarely can afford.) Perhaps then that jades my perception of consumer goods, but I'd like to think people throughout civilization have always owned consumer goods, the issue is just the way culture views these things as disposable. Maybe it's an issue of things being too affordable.

if you don't have a solution just complain about everyone else

Back when I was a senior in high school and freshman in college I was really into ska. I remember moving to Boston for my first year at Emerson and just being really excited about the scene and discovering new music from other people who were into what I liked, instead of the usual situation where I was the one who took all the chances on buying random cassettes and recommending the good ones to friends. It was one of the very first music sub-cultures that I was in, mainly because where I lived before there wasn't a big variety of sub-cultures to get into and where there were people were overly obsessed with whether you fit the image of what they thought their rebellious group should look like (still a problem in that particular small city, where I'm once again living.) About a year later disaster struck; ska got trendy in the mainstream. All of a sudden there were tons of bands on the radio with that ska sound, some good, some pretty shite. Usenet got cluttered with newbies, and worst of all, people in the scene turned into raging, elitist assholes. Every post, every discussion turned into an obnoxious debate about whether or not a bands members had been appropriately introduced to ska through earphones being placed against their mother's womb, everyone who had a song on th radio was a sellout, everyone who was newly introduced to ska was a poser. The scene imploded. After that experience I refused to ever get involved with a scene, which in retrospect probably made it a lot harder for me to make friends because I stayed out of discussions and kept to myself at concerts.

The reason I bring this up is earlier today I was killing time reading a blog. It was a home and design blog dedicated to green concerns (which have certainly become trendy in the mainstream, almost to the point of overkill at least for me) and I was actually inspired to, well rant, about the same BS holier than thou negative attitude that ruined the ska culture in the mid 90s that I found in some of the comments. People bitching because the blog posted about consumer products that the commenters belittled as "plastic crap"; completely unhelpful condescending suggestions; and I'm clearly greener than you why don't you make the same effort I do sorts of crap. It really pissed me off for some reason. Well,actually, I know the reason. It irritated me because I think this particular blog is a place that people who are first starting to get interested in living more sustainably and trying to find products that have less environmental impact that the ones they're currently using and I think that nasty and negative attitude is only going to be off-putting to not only those people, but a lot of people who read blogs for a positive community and good ideas. It pisses me off because, well what's the point in it? If you feel like a new washroom air freshner from a company with green points is an un-necessary energy wasting piece of plastic consumer crap, then what good have you really done anyone by calling it that and admonishing people for not opening their bathroom windows? Did anyone learn what they can do instead that would be effective, but not involve energy waste or plastic or buying new stuff? (especially if they happen to be like me or most of the people I know who rent apartments and do not, in fact, have a bathroom window.) I think it's so lazy to post nothing but complaining and negativity without offering solutions for how the thing you have such a problem with can be made better. I bring up the ska scene, because I've noticed that most of this negativity I've only seen since green became the new big consumer trend and there are suddenly a lot more communities focusing on it and a lot more quasi-green consumer products popping up, leading me to think that it's a related syndrome. The help-the-thing-I-care-about-is-over-run-with-posers-who-think-it's-just-about-the-fashion syndrome.

why is everyoe I know getting married?

So my ex is now engaged, and it makes me feel just inexplicably hollow a wee bit. I don't get it at all, I'm ecstatic for him because he seemed so blue about girls when last we spoke, which was just around the time he met his now fiancee, and more than that shortly after we split I met my current boyfriend who I love and am very happy with. And, yet, inside there's that just awful sinking inside, actually I think I felt more of a blow when I heard about the engagement than I did when he told me he'd met someone else when we split. I don't get emotions sometimes. Also why is everyone I know getting married? Seriously starting in June I'm going to be sitting through a lot of weddings. Some I'm excited about, others, not so much.

Things I don't get about Ebay Sellers

I've been re-discovering my ebay addiction lately. I hadn't made a bid in over a year and then suddenly I've been on a tear buying vintage tupperware, and 70s pyrex, and fisher price toys, and Kid Robot vinyl collector's toys and of course vintage jewelry. I totally don't get how people expect to sell things like jewelry if they just have one dark camera-phone quality photo where you can't see any detail.

More than than though I have become intolerant of the word "rare" which seems to be attached to every damn listing on Ebay. "L@@K Rare Must See Vintage" If your item is so rare why are you selling it for $0.99? (not to mention if it's so rare why are there 40 other listings of the same thing?)

Land of the Living

It's been an awfully long time since I kept up this blog and an awfully busy year to attempt to justify the absence, but I've decided I miss doing the blog thing and so I return. I'm moving to a new loft downtown with my boyfriend in 2 weeks, which is 2 blocks from the Bemis Centre, so there's definitely no good excuse for me to be too lazy to drive all the way down for openings anymore as well.

At any rate, I wanted to put on my former film student hat for a second and rant on the state of American film. So the other day I had a doctor's appointment and was reading the newspaper in the waiting room. There was an article about how dismal the ratings for the Oscars were this year and the article was really sort of complaining that it was in a way the Academy's fault for not nominating high-grossing films that scads of people had seen. This, well really cheesed me off for one, the Academy Awards are supposed to be about the best film-making, not which film can sucker the most people into going with the promise of the most explosions and tits, but beyond that I think it misses the mark about who to blame for the year's best films not being the year's most-seen films.

There have always been films and movies, films were serious about their art and movies were serious about pure viewer enjoyment and this is still true and will always be true, the problem is that there aren't enough hybrids anymore. That's the real reason that more high-grossing movies aren't making it to the Oscar list, they don't have enough craft to be there on their own merit. I mean, okay, I thought Forrest Gump was over-rated twaddle and I was livid that it won anything over Shawshank Redemption that year, especially Tom Hanks winning that second Oscar over Morgan Freeman which was an utter abomination, but despite the fact that Gump was mass market friendly and genuinely a movie (even without explosions) it was also a film. Jaws was a film and a movie, so was Jurassic Park, even the Matrix was an even balance of art and mass appeal at least until the second installment turned into an example of how Hollywood is derivitive and lazy most of the time, but it seems like there's a real dearth of old school directors who put out quality films that also happen to be giant spectacle blockbusters. Cinema is really the lesser for the lack of Hollywood buckling down and trying to put out well-written, well-acted, well-directed big-budget spectaculars instead of a spate of crap remakes and un=imaginative sequels. Steven Spielberg in the 80s was both an autuer and a man who understood the appeal of a good action flick and even he seems to have forgotten what it's about. I'm sure I'm no longer making sense, but the gist is I think the fact that Hollywood churns out crap and expects us to swallow it and directors with vision and talent seem mostly afraid to tackle making something as mainstream appealing as it is deep enough for the film theory fanatistes and that's a real shame.

Speaking of films, I just got back from seeing Be Kind Rewind, which despite being a comedy I cried during, which is I guess unsurprising in that I have cried at every Michel Gondry film ever. I can see why critical reaction is so mixed, honestly the film is a little slow, occasionally a little boring and while it's quite funny at times, Gondry's trailer of him recreating his own trailer alà the film's protagonists is far funnier than the film is. I couldn't not like it though because, well, the film is one big film theory essay on the very nature of film and really why it's important to us all. I don't know if it really succeeds for a viewer who can't read that, but it deserves a place in the not disappointing category for me because it reminded me of something I forgot and that's what made me cry.

I seem to have missed Persepolis, that sucks I was really looking forward to it. Though I guess I could make the drive to the Riepma Ross tomorrow, but I don't know if it's worth putting that many miles on my sick little car as nothing seems to take very long to come out on DVD anymore, and I'm woefully behind on good movies that are showing here still.

Son of Rambow looks half amazing and half schmaltzy feel-good-crap, I'll probably see it anyway. I am horrified by the Speed Racer trailer, one that there is a speed racer movie on the way and two because it looks like some kind of frightening concept film actually, I hate to say it, but it looks like the love child of Sirk and Bay, oh g-d, maybe I'm actually dying to see it. Maybe I was wrong maybe it's not Roland Emmerich who's the new Douglas Sirk, maybe it's the Wachowskis! Also Harold and Kumar escape from Guantanamo Bay? Are you serious Hollywood? Really?

twiddling thumbs in purgatory

I think I might be the worst bloody blogger ever. I always have such good intentions, then I'll drop off for a whole month or so. Seriously I even went to an openng and took notes and have the photo post for the review saved in a draft, but I just couldn't be arsed to write the damn thing up, and now it almost feels pointelss because the show is about to end if it hasn't already.

I think a part of that whole attitude of slack that's been permeating me lately comes from the fact that I'm still here. I mean I'd wanted to be all moved and starting my struggle for some sort reasonable life in the adult world by now, but that hasn't happened yet because actually making a transatlantic move costs so bloody much especially when you're on the awful end of the currency exchange. I'm trying to not be entirely seat of my pants about it because even though I've family up north , I have to be able to survive on my own. And whilst I wait to be solvent enough to leave I feel trapped in limbo.

my working process on a tilia stem print

I'm glad blogger finally got posting tags so I can group things easily. I went to a new opening at the Bemis Underground tonight so there will be a new review up soon. I really need to keep up on this blog for more than just the infrequent show critique (especially since lately it seems that every show I go to is a friend's and therefore against my unwriteen rule for review. It would be different if I was getting paid to write critiques, but I'm not I'm just writing them because I want to and also it's a better way to get writing samples than trying to whip something out at the drop of a hat. So generally I won't review the work of friends or personal acquaintances like professors, though one of my former professors does have work in the show I went to tonight and I'm going to review it, but I happen to really like her work and it's a grou show with a lot of artists so it wouldn't be prudent to review everyone but her.

Anyway I thought I would do a process series of posts on a piece I'm just starting work on. I'm still in my cellular material phase, but this one is going to be a print rather than a painting, so I thought that would be a good candidate for a process piece.

step 1: so I have a giant collection of microscopy photos of different types of cells. Whenever I'm thinking about starting another piece I scan through them looking for the general shapes or textures that I think will go well for whatever media I'm planning to work in. (oil paint, watercolour or linoleum carving prints. Though I've been thinking about screen prints lately as well) For this piece I decided on this tilia stem


step 2: once I've decided what image I want to work from, I take my chunk of linoleum and a pencil and sketch out first the basic arcs of what goes where and then fell in the detail. This is the first point where I ask myself why the hell I'm so into drawing such tedious intricate things :) (there will be many, many points during the carving process where I ask myself this. or in fact the painting process. I've started actually sketching out the images on my canvases now before I paint because it turns out nicer in the end than when I just did everything on the spur of the moment. I've just finished step 2 on this piece as you see below I've got my image and I'm all ready to start carving my lino.


To be continued as I get farther along.

Elodea

2006 oil and ink on canvas 12x12

lend me your cooking advice.

Any foodies/cooks out there I need to come up with a suitable replacement for onions in recipes. I'm allergic to onions and their various brothers (scallions, leeks etc) though it may actually be a severe intolerance as I'm not particularly allergic to other members of the lily family (or at least they don't make me anywhere near as ill) I don't really mind the absence of the textures the onions provide (all the years of digestive miseries have ingrained a dread at that familiar crunch so celery is out) I'm getting to be at a loss for what to use to replace it for flavour. Usually I just add garlic (which oddly doesn't do any damage to my innards that an acid reducer can't cure) but that's not alway a help, especially if the recipe already has garlic in it, and also I don't want to overload on garlic incase it increases my sensitivity to it (Living label scouring onion free makes buying food bad enough, a garlic free world might be nigh impossible.) Is there anything not in the lily family that would be a good substitute? (especially for leeks.)

Nuclear Dichotomies

nuclear2
Originally uploaded by sockmonkeyrevolt.

The Bemis Underground's new show, Nuclear Dichotomies, is an interesting, but ultimately unsatisfying pairing of history and art.

Curator Tim Guthrie has attempted to fuse together informative and often poignant historical artifacts, archival materials and interactive displays with artworks which are at times technically skillful, but devoid of depth or contextual intensity and at others woefully cliched and resemblant of an artist's first experiments in different mediums. The result is visually cluttered and frustrating in its lack of artistic enlightenment on a subject that's been so prominently on the world's mind for the last 60 years, you wouldn't think it tough to find something to say on its relevance to our lives today.

It's a shame that the encaustic work 'Sworg Shot' is buried in the most easily missed corner of the gallery, as it is really the only painting with any complexity. Instead we find, in a position of prominence, 'Sabre Rattling,' an inexplicably cliche, five-foot digital painting printed on vinyl of a man on horseback carrying a sword and wearing a chemsuit gas mask (which I think might be the most embarrassingly naff artwork to come from a professional artist.) along with a painfully juvenile attempt to mix a mushroom cloud with religious icon. Guthrie's numerous encaustic and digital portraits are aesthetically pleasing, but do little to stimulate the mind or add relevance to the theme of the show.

Despite the failings of the art side of the equation to be moving, the historical side does provide depth and emotion and, at times, striking beauty. Throughout the gallery are several artifacts from the bombings of Japan; most displayed beneath blown glass bells which are as warped and alien looking as the melted, seared and broken items themselves. It's hard not to look at the charred remains of a child's tricycle and not think of the carefree times humanity itself has lost since the dawn of the nuclear age. Likewise, for all the assertations of the press releases that science and art are a dichotomy, it's easy to find artistic beauty in the film footage of the blasts from the US nuclear testing program whilst being awed by their destructive power.

One of the most successful art pieces in the show is actually an artistic re-invisioning of archival footage. 'Recalling Trinity' is an animated short featuring Robert Oppenheimer's thoughts on the first nuclear test, nicknamed Trinity. The animation invovles replacing archival footage with re-imagined frames recalling the current obsession with rotoscope animation, but the handpainted frames here give the work a frentic quality that reminds me of early Bill Plympton (though, of course, they lack the surreal humour of Plymptoons.)

It's in these pieces of history that the viewer is challenged to consider our current relationships with the nuclear and therefore they are as much art as they are science and far more powerful than any of the intentional art. The naivete of the Department of Defence's nuclear attack preparedness materials, advising 60s era families that hiding behind their sofa would somehow save them from a nuking seems an amusing collection until you remember the equally absurd materials put out only three years ago by Homeland Security, offering up duct tape and rubbish bags as a way to biological weapon/dirty bomb proof your home.

Nuclear Dichotomies also offers several attractively designed, highly informative and interactive displays outlining the history of the nuclear testing program in the United States, interviews with survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and various radio and film materials from the early Cold War era.

Better curating and some serious editing in the form of scrapping the vast majority of the portraits and paintings, which were too numerous and made for a very crowded and cramped feeling in the gallery in the first place, could have benefited the exhibition.

For what it's worth, my favourite piece was a series of viewmaster slides from the 50s and 60s of various vacation spots. They seem just like average tourist shots until you notice mushroom clouds looming ominously in the background behind oblivious tourists. They're all the more intriguing for the tension created in wondering if they're altered or merely amazingly spooky happenstance. Whether they're ferreted out or brilliantly subtle fakes, they almost make up for 'Sabre Rattling.'

cosmo is better in Europe (another thing I never thought I'd ponder about)

(I started writing this almost a week ago, got distracted and saved it, the thought train may have derailed I'm afraid.)
I've long been a fan of UK magazines over most American ones in certain areas. For instance I think Empire is one of the best mainstream movie mags and it makes me sad for all those years I was reading Movieline for my not so elitist fix (though there was something entertaining about trying to guess if an actor would pass my movieline test. Few ever did, because Movieline was really excellent at making everyone they interviewed come off as a completely self-obsessed asshole who was nowhere near as compelling as they thought they were. Henry Rollins was the big exception; he came off as a self-obsessed asshole who actually was as compelling as he thought he was, and the interview introduced me to the bit of cocktail trivia that is the fact that he keeps a piece of his best-friend's brain in a jar on his desk. I'm sure one day that will be a question on Jeopardy or Who Wants to Be a Millionaire or something, and then I will win, (or you, now that you've read it, or if you've selected me as your phone a friend lifeline) Anyway, I read Empire, I read Q, though technically my favourite music magazine is Resonance which is out of Seattle and thus American, however it's not a major magazine and thus not really what I'm about to discuss because smaller magazines tend to have better design or more freedom with content choices in general because they are more willing to experiment to get a reader base and also they haven't whored out to advertisers because they have to get a reader base before advertisers will want them to whore themselves out. Consequently the reason that I love Empire is because while they are a mainstream publication, rather than a scholarly film journal, they still have features and reviews of films, including classics, which talk seriously about the film theory aspects of films, including otherwise entertainment only blockbuster movies. In market-comparable film magazines on this side of hte Atlantic I find you either get overly serious or pretentiousness or pointless PR driven pap.

Today I picked up a UK Cosmo, there was already a US Cosmo in the drawer at work. I read the UK Cosmo and was struck at how much longer it took me to read through and how much more content it seemed to have. It takes about an hour with customer interruptions to read an American Cosmo. I don't really like American Cosmo it's just a bunch of sex-related rehashings of YM embarrassing moment stories, yet another description of that bold new sex move (the reverse cowgirl has been the ost popular selection for about 2 years running) that's somehow been bold and new for the last 15 years that I've been looking at that magazine, a horoscope about what everyone's best days to hook up with their co-workers are, some hot new trend that is the exact opposite of what they told you was hot last month, a vapid interview with a celebrity which now features some myspace meme style questionnaire that they all fill out with handwriting that looks like they've just graduated grade 8 and are excited about starting high school, and a few pictures of coked out whores in clothing that costs more than your rent and will never look good on anyone who is not a coked out whore. Oh wait I almost forgot now there are 8 or so pages of bland looking guys with surfer physiques and no shirts on and half of the content is targeted at men (presumably because half of Cosmo's readership is men who want to wank to the photos of coked out whores in pantaloons [and what the fuck is up with pataloons anyway?! Who? Who one day said at the meeting of the style council: 'You know, I was looking at some paintings of Sir Francis Drake and William Shakespeare and just admiring their poofy pants, I really think that this year's hot shorts style should be pantaloons.' Were they high?])

Basically I find it vapid and completely ads dominated. I felt a bit surprised reading the UK version because there seemed to be a lot more content and much of it was really useful to the sort of general person who reads a women's fashion mag. You know those of us that don't have 1200 dollars to put don on a single pocketbook and are not a size 0. I was curious though whether it was true or just a perception of more content so I counted pages of the 240 pages in the August American Cosmo only 115 of those pages contained actual content which is 48% conversely the UK version was 296 pages 136 of which had content (though the UK edition has a rather big classifieds section including several pages of career pages of companies hiring so if you knock those out the percentage climbs to 51% content, but counting all the pages that's only 46% and therefore actually less content to advertising than the US version just slightly.

First off it's pretty sickening that more than half of both magazines is taken up entirely by advertisements. What's most interesting is that there's a strong perception in me that there is significantly more content in the UK version (I was actually expecting them both to be vapid and ad-filled so it's not like I suddenly have a culture snobbery in this case) I've come to decide that a lot of it has to do with the design and layout decisions, at least as much as the choice of content. In the American edition, you have to wade through 16 pages of ads before you even come to the contents page while in the UK version it's on page 3. In the UK edition pages are laid out so that there's a lot of content on the right-hand side of a spread and when you flip those pages there's either continuing text, or the next story on the verso of that page whilst in the US version the layout favours sticking all content pages on the left on what is mentally seen as the back of the last page while the advertisements take up the right hand prime real estate in the spread. (Now I know we all read left to right in English, but the right side is still the prime real estate because one we don't read magazines like we do books, generally due to the format and two our eye wants to travel right anyway especially if there's a giant dominant image on that side as opposed to text.) Text is rarely carried across both sides of a single page so everything seems broken up by ads in a way it doesn't in the UK arrangement, because even if all the pages are separate single page stories carrying it over onto the backside of the page content-wise helps create an illusion of bigger chunks of content.

This is probably why I don't write music reviews

As I'm a hopeless music addict I thought I'd also start doing a random set of reviews of things I've downloaded or listened to in a week. Thus providing content to this journal in these times when nothing is particularly going on in my life otherwise to write about. I'm so generally long-winded it's an interesting exercise to blurb like this.

This week's downloads (part 1):
nobody and mystic chords of memory-- tree colored see: what it is: Sweeping alt-country Americana mixed with electronic elements and hip hop that makes for a genuinely satisfying indie pop record, and a perfect addition to your summer soundtrack. Just listening to the tracks surrounds you in an aural version of hazy summer heat and floating idly in a canoe down the creek or lounging on a picnic blanket somewhere in a wooded clearing (or maybe I've been down the basement too long and I'm hallucinating the childhood I didn't actually live, but imagined I would have if only I could have lived in the books I read growing up.) I wouldn't be surprised if this album pops up on some year end best of lists.

Ed Harcourt-- the beautiful lie: Apparently, this chap is rather prolific. I don't know how I've missed him before, probably because I'm not the sort who usually downloads lush pop singer-songwriter type albums, mainly because that genre is full of utter shite (like James Blunt), but lately I've been more willing to give anything a shot, and this album is well worth it. What it is: the sort of sweet mainly acoustic pop album whose tracks you could imagine on a thoughtful gen-x romantic comedy's soundtrack. You'll likely like it if you like: M Ward, Tom Waits or The Eels My favourite songs: 'you only call me when you're drunk', 'I'm the drug' 'the last cigarette' and 'whirlwind in d minor'

Peeping Tom: You can always trust that a Mike Patton project will be different and interesting. They all sound slightly like an AM easy listening channel run through a perverterator, and would probably soundtrack a porn film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, but that's interesting right? Of course it is. Peeping Tom is actually a soundtrack of sorts, the project was inspired by the 1960 thriller. Collaborators include Amon Tobin, Dose One, Massive Attack, Kool Keith and Norah Jones. The Norah Jones track 'sucker' is genius. Made to be listened to: while driving downtown at night or at any party where you want to invoke a slightly seedy stripclub that for some reason is where to too hip to trend hop congregate. Best tracks: 'five seconds', 'mojo' and 'sucker'

quasi-- when the going gets dark Quasi remains a darker more sonically complex cynical and bitter Ben Folds five. The music is harder and less twee than before, but still unmistakably quasi. Best tracks: 'I don't know you anymore' and 'death culture blues'

casiotone for the painfully alone-- etiquette Owen Ashworth is sounding a bit scarily like Connor Oberst on his new album, well minus that obnoxious tremolo. If you think I'm kidding, listen to 'young shields.' Etiquette is a much slicker, more produced effort than the previous albums, the lofi casiotone is still there, but it sounds more like an instrument rather than a gimmick this time. Overall a really nice progression musically and a worthwhile album. best tracks: 'young shields', 'I love creedance' and 'bobby malone moves home'

Gomez-- how we operate: Gomez is one of those bands that I never got into despite the many times they were supposed to be on the cusp of being the next best thing. They still sound like they're on the cusp of being big, but I mean they sound like they're on the edge of being great, not that this album could put them into the big. Don't get me wrong, it's an alright album, though I think it sounds like it could have come out 10 years ago as much as today it has a kind of bland 90s alt-rock timelessness about it.

Keane-- Under the Iron Sea Dear Keane, Why do all the songs on your new album sound exactly alike? And why do they sound like they could also be on a Coldplay album? Is it because someone told you that the world needed more coldplay songs, but Chris Martin could only write so many at a time so you thought you'd bravely step in to fill the void we all felt? To be honest, I like Keane more than I like Coldplay, mainly because as soon as 'Yellow' hit the airwaves I immediately loathed Martin et al for making me want to puncture my eardrums. I'll probably not delete the album from my harddrive just in case I ever have one of those days where I need to wear a thin floaty blouse and khakis and walk through the rain in the park distressed about fucking up and mucking up a relationship with my soulmate, because we all know this would be the soundtrack for that montage that ends in a profoundly revealing makeout session while the synths swell to orchestral levels, and I'm certainly not doing the makeup makeout to coldplay.

Superman

Superman Returns is probably going to be the most awkwardly reviewed movie of 2006. It's really not fair either because the movie deserves to be reviewed on its own merits or faults, not on whether Brandon Routh channels or doesn't channel Christopher Reeve. Let me just say this now: Who the fuck cares if he channels Christopher Reeve? Christopher Reeve isn't all that great. The only reason you (and by you I mean all the fucking media and critical windbags who've been going on and on about how how no one will ever be able to be Superman as good as he was) care about Christopher Reeve's legacy as Superman is because he broke his neck and became ten times the man he was before his accident, and then he died, and then his completely amazing human being of a wife died no less tragically. Isn't the question you should be asking, can he channel Superman?

Superman Returns isn't really an action film, which is kind of odd considering that it's Superman. Whether you'll find it successful or a failure depends largely on whether you want it to be an action movie or whether you're more interested in Superman gaining some actual dimensionality. Either way the film never quite delivers on its potential, but it's not a dud.

I'll be honest, I've never liked Superman, he bores me. Superman has always been this one-dimensional American icon to me. He's got super powers, he's pretty much invincible, he's good and he lives in a world where good and evil aren't really complicated. Superman is good, Lex Luthor is bad. Where's the attraction in that? I like Spiderman, he's got the super powers, but he's also caught up in the messy complications of real life. He struggles with the weight of his responsibilities. His villains are often also friends and their motivations are more complicated than being greedy and wanting to rule the world. Batman, even better, not only does he have to wrestle with all the extremely dark and damaged emotions that come along with being human, but he doesn't even have super powers, just super wealth and a Sharper Image platinum catalogue.

I'm not a comic book fangirl, so I'll never be able to approach any of these franchises whilst thumbing through a back catalog trying to decide if some film decision is supposed to be sacrilege or not. I don't think I've watched any of the previous Superman films more than once and since I was about 10 years-old. I don't watch Smallville and I don't care. I will, however, be going to see the sequel whenever the decide to make it. Because despite the movies flaw (and there are several) Bryan Singer et al have finally delivered a Superman who's more than a caricature.

I've read a few reviews and found a pretty bizarre set of complaints people have had. My favourite has to be the guy complaining that Superman's super powers aren't realistic enough. He wanted to know how Superman could lift a giant rock out of the ocean and toss it into space, but he could barely stop the falling 777 from crashing into the ground. (personally, if you ask me, the answer is clearly that while he could just stop the falling plane on a dime if he wanted to, doing so probably would have crushed the plane and killed everyone on board. Obviously it takes a lot longer to stop a plane safely with minimal damage when you're dealing with velocity, structural details of the plane itself and the fact that the force of the reverse velocity is concentrated on only the small surface area of his two hands, but I'm not a scientist, what do I know?) If you're going to sit around and discuss scientific plausibilities in a Superhero movie a.) you probably need to look into some better hobbies and b.) shouldn't you be more concerned with the fact that a 777 goes all the way up into the upper atmosphere or possibly all the way into outer space and comes back down through it without exploding, burning up, being crushed by the pressure differences, or being detrimental to anyone on board and not only that, but Lois Lane doesn't have an oxygen mask on for at least 5 minutes whilst being thrown back and forth around the cabin but doesn't suffer from lack of oxygen nor does she lose consciousness at any time? Also no one vomits. (I'm pretty sure they call the plane that goes up high enough that people on board achieve anti-gravity is called the Vomit Comet for a reason) See I'm one of those people who can suspend disbelief for the big things; like guy who can fly, shoot laser beams and stop bullets with his eyes, but you have to keep the small details legitimate.

The movies big failure is its complete lack of inertia. Nothing ever gets rolling and instead of an engrossing movie we get a series of scenes that work all right as scenes, but never gel together into a single unit and thus the final product is kind of boring. There are either too many action scenes breaking into the engaging story of Superman coming back after just flying off on a whim to his destroyed homeworld for years to find that everyone has moved on, or is at least trying to; or too much Superman pining because his love was practical enough to build a new life for herself instead of just moping around waiting for him as he clearly thought she was going to taking screen time away from day saving and cgi flying sequences.

Kevin Spacey's Lex Luthor was rather disappointing to be honest. He kind of seemed like he didn't want to break out in that stereotypical Spacey quiet to psychotic anger mode, but couldn't quite decide what to do instead. Parker Posey was funny in that twitchy Parker Posey way, though her character is little more than the typical bad guy bimbo role (why can't writers, either screen or comic book, ever seem to write an interesting villain's girlfriend? There are sometimes interesting female villains but not real Lady MacBeth style bad guy girlfriends.) Kate Bosworth was fine as Lane, though all it really requires is having a halfway decent screen presence and not completely sucking as there isn't much written for her to actually have to act. In fact for a movie over 2 hours long, there didn't seem to be much dialogue at all. The only time a character spoke in an entire paragraph seems to be when Lex Luthor was summing up his nefarious plan. As for my opinion of Routh? I liked him. His take on Kent was more realistic, choosing to make him more the real life guy that no one really notices rather than a clumsy bumbling putz. (I've always thought that if Kent were such a klutz you'd notice he wasn't around.) His Superman is subtle.

So all in all a decent movie, not as good as the other franchise restoration film, Batman Begins, but nothing to shake a stick at. (and thankfully this one didn't start over at the beginning but just picked a point after the two ok films to move forward from. Personally I don't know hat I'm very happy about the decision to remake the first 2 Batman movies as the next films in the series. I liked the prequel, but there's nothing wrong with Batman, and it's going to be really hard, I think, to get a Joker who's as good as Nicholson.)

JPod, the review

There are few things sadder than an 'exciting, original voice in fiction' finally writing enough novels for one to realise that they really only had one, perhaps two at the most, great novels in them.

You'd think I'd learn my lesson for unbridled enthusiasm of writers whose first novels explode with unique content and form, after all I've already suffered painful disillusionments with Irvine Welsh and Chuck Palahniuk, but old habits die hard and now I can add Douglas Coupland to the list of writers whose exciting, original voices have become tired and boring because their catalog becomes essentially just one novel over and over in an ever diminishing level of quality.

Perhaps I'm too hard on the dramatically different, holding it up to a standard that the conventional never has to achieve because it all sounded the same to begin with. I understand that originality of voice and vision doesn't mean a writer will be original from himself novel after novel, at least not in terms of style, but really, is it too much to ask for something new in terms of character? I think not.

Coupland's new novel, JPod, is essentially just Microserfs without the heart, originality or plausibility. Set in the world of videogame design instead of Microsoft and full of ridiculously stupid subplots, Jpod mistakes self-conscious farce for cleverness and self-referential arrogant twaddle for slyly acknowledging his own place in the culture he satirises.

The main character, his fellow programmers and other work related characters are well drawn and believable, but, then, he's been writing the same characters since Generation X hasn't he? A mildly eccentric, pop culture obsessed bunch of 20-somethings you wish here your friends with their oh-so-irreverent hijinx and culture dropping, but here these characters aren't authentic, they're the ones who've read every Coupland novel and wanted to be friends with those characters so badly, you're pretty sure that all of their wacky hijinx comes from a conscious decision to act like Coupland characters and he makes sure they mention him and his previous books so many times you can't forget. It's like a 400 page advertisement for his older, better novels. He even goes so far as to make himself a character in the novel.

It's not that the book is unreadable, quite the opposite, despite every scene and plot point seeming conspicuously written only to set up Coupland making fun of a buzzword or cultural phenomena (a trip to China seems to exist only so we could read that the original strain of SARS is now called SARS Classic and that China puts human rights victims who've made it big on CNN to work in sweat shops so they can charge Americans exorbitant prices on goods because they've been assembled by the Tiananmen Square tank guy)

The read is quick and you laugh along the way, but at the end you can't help but feel cheated. After all, you already own Microserfs did you really need another book about tech geeks in crap jobs they eventually quit to be mega-successful in the end, have dysfunctional families and quirky lives, especially one that's not remotely as well-written?

It all seems spelled out for you in the final chapter; this is just a contractual obligation and it's easier to write a pale imitation of a well-liked novel than it is to come up with something better or different. Like the abysmally awful pop albums made yearly to get musicians out of contracts, Jpod will be snapped up eagerly by legions of Coupland fans and, except for the few who have to have every novel for their collection, will grace the shelves of your local used book shop as quickly as Mariah Carey albums hit the overstock dollar bins at CD TradingPost.

Maybe for his next novel, Coupland can fictionalise Welsh and Palahniuk and skewer the publishing world where cult novelists puke out subpar novels and laugh off literary backlash at the ATM where they check their balances.

Signal Channel

The Bemis Center’s massive exhibition Signal Channel, is no one-trip affair. Spreading throughout all three galleries and the hallway of the Center’s 12th and Leavenworth space, the curators have collected an impressive array of video art from installation pieces to more traditional short film works. There’s so much to see that you can’t possibly handle it all in one go if you really want to give everything the attention it deserves.

The first gallery houses installations. Video interacts with objects and even the viewer as in the case of Gary Day, Russ Nordman and Anthony Trecek-King’s “The Book of Light and Dark,” a careful integration of print, animation and projection where the video projections are controlled by the page a book of prints is open to as the viewer looks through it.

David Zimmer’s brilliant LCD constructions feature videos of birds and bees in apothecary jars and odd scientific scopes, providing a creepy Victorian feel and a modern alternative to those dusty taxidermy animals in your grandfather’s attic. Zimmer’s best piece is the eerie and haunting “Sleeping Inside,” an antique wooden workbox from which Pascal Humbert’s melancholy music emanates whilst the LCD on top shows the fitful sleep of a man.

Phyllis Baldino’s “Cheeseboard/Not Cheeseboard” offers a witty exploration of form and function in everyday objects.

The back gallery featured mainly digital computer animation works including “Happenstance (part one of many parts)” by Gary Hill, but the room’s standout offering is Peter Campus’ analog “Edge of the Ocean.”

In Gallery Two, over ten TVs and two projectors provide a good mix of humorous and serious works from the psychedelic animation and horror film collage of Peter Burr and Christopher Doulgeris’ “Hooliganship: Go” to Mathieu Borysevicz’s funny meditations on media and social buzzwords.

Former Bemis resident Songyi Kim continues to demonstrate exceptional talent with “Polaroids.” Like Kim’s past works, “Polaroids” utilizes daily self portraits videotaped and edited to investigate identity and human experience in a visually poetic way, but here she uses the unique visual properties of the developing Polaroid print to introduce a ghostly and fragile quality.


One of the most shocking, but also the most diverse and enjoyable artists featured is Torsten Zenas Burns. Brilliantly bizarre and comical, spattered with rampant nudity and sometimes fake blood and looking like Stanislaw Lem on acid; Burns’ works, about an hour’s worth in all, revolve around the human experience: birth, death, our interactions with each other and our ever changing environments (also Zombies) set on a sci-fi space station. A naked Zombie soft shoes in the hygiene center and explains how he overcame his baser undead instinct to eat the crew and their families by munching on his own arm and deciding it wasn’t for him, crew members on ropes dance along the ceiling and manipulated footage culled from science programs set to Sarah McLachlan‘s “I Won’t Fear Love” all present a visually arresting look at the space-world his work exists in.

The monitor seemed neglected opening night, probably due to the substantial full frontal nudity and sexual connotations in some pieces, which is a shame because it’s definitely one of the most complex and satisfying works at the exhibition.

Also featured are two hours of work from William Wegman (better known for his portraits of his dogs, Man Ray and Fay Ray) and “The Order” from the third instalment of Matthew Barney’s seminal video series “The Cremaster Cycle.”

An impressive array of well-curated works, with something to offer the neophyte to video art and the well-versed alike, Signal Channel runs until August 12th and is one of this Summer’s must see exhibitions.