Bird Turds #26
• Finally, right? Also, the second color treatment for "The Constant Gardener" strip after the jump.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
Thursday, November 06, 2008
Sunday, November 02, 2008
"I Want To Read, And I've Never Said That Before"
•Today's subject line is a quote from my man Jush, who, along with my two other readers, has wanted a "Curtains For You, Kid" update for quite some time now.
About the picture: it's taken from the Ivan Brunetti chapter of that book In the Studio that I can't shut up about. As you may have gathered, it's a miniature biography of movie producer Val Lewton. See, I just finished watching thirty-one straight days of horror movies, and about the only ones I can stand are the ones made by Val Lewton. I Walked With a Zombie is probably my favorite. But whatever. Here's the Flickr page.
• Paraphrased from a strangely irate B-Rett:
'How is it that we're in an economic crisis when the economy can support at least five magazines that come out every month solely devoted to RC helicopters? And there's a bunch more that just deal with the Civil War! How can you fill a shitload of different magazines with news about something that happened 150 years ago?'
I'm not sure what set him off about this, or what it has to do with the economy, but I'm certain that you'll be able to find many more observations like this one when Biscuit finally starts his own blog, tentatively titled "Videogames and Stuff I See on E-Bay."
• It's way cooler that Terry Tate's back than it is that CFYK's back, by the way.
• I am right now, and at long last, finishing up Bird Turds #25. In the meantime, though, there's this other thing I made after the jump.
(Flickr page here.)
• So I guess I'm a Pistons fan now. Which is way the hell easier than it was being a Nuggets fan. (And, yeah, way the hell easier than being a fan of the Kansas City Chiefs.)
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Sort of Homeless Once Again
• Above: A little flowchart I made for Vulcan Video. It's rough 'cause it's a rough draft. (Original Flickr jam here.)
• Paraphrased telephone conversation between Jush and The Devil Himself, October 2, 2008
TDH: The thing about it is, like, I have some time to kill. But it's just enough time to not have time to really do anything. But too much time to do nothing.
J: I bet you have enough time to update your damn blog. It's been like a month.
TDH: For real? A month?
J: Maybe not a month. But like three solid weeks.
• So, yeah. Sorry about that. I am a little bit transient at the moment, having just moved out of my apartment, and waiting to move into the new place. I do, however, have a good feeling in the form of a suspicion that increased productivity is on the way. Right now, though, I am blogging at a coffee shop, which is about the lamest thing you can do with an afternoon.
• CFY,K hero Paul Pope's clothing line for DKNY finally came out. And I don't know. I could see rocking the hoodie, but I'm holding out for the Heavy Liquid hardcover and in the meantime holding it down for regular old black tee shirts.
• Anyway, like I said: There'll be more - I'm hoping a lot more - soon. In the meantime I'm waiting for B-Rett's official commentary on tonight's Vice Presidential debates.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Reading A Lot Lately
• A while back, a co-worker of mine was talking about how much better of a movie The Constant Gardener would have been if it had actually been about a guy who constantly gardens. So. I drew a little comic about it. (Original Flickr page here.)
• More (read: "Legit") comic news: I finally got my hot little hands on "Love and Rockets: New Stories #1," and it, to say the least, did not disappoint. I don't know what to say about it other than that.
I mean. There's more to say. Like. About the tightening of Jaime's drawing style versus the loosening of his writing. And how the opposite appears to be happening with his brother Beto. But, you know. If you're a fan of Love and Rockets, then you're going to read New Stories #1 regardless of anything I'm going to tell you. And if you're not a fan, then you're going to have to pick through like 25 years of back issues before that kind of observation makes any difference to you whatsoever.
• Yesterday I received the new Neal Stephenson book, Anathem, in the mail. Because OD rules.
I'm not one of those guys who has read everything that Neal Stephenson has ever written. I have, though, read The Baroque Cycle and it's precursor Cryptonomicon. All these books are long as hell. So. Even though I haven't read everything that he ever wrote, Neal Stephenson is probably the writer that I've read the most pages of in my life. Which is weird.
Following The Baroque Cycle, which dealt primarily with Stephenson's large scale re-imagining of the history of technology and commerce on Earth, Anathem is kind of a curveball, as it, so far, deals with monastic civilizations on a planet separate from our own. By which I mean to say: Neal's on some sci-fi shit.
That's fine with me. I'm not the biggest sci-fi guy in the world, but I respect mastery as much as I do not respect genre fiction / literary fiction distinctions, and Neal Stephenson is that dude. So. I'm willing to not resist, as a reader, some science fiction.
That said, early and often in Anathem, a reader is inundated with all kinds of new vocabulary concocted and cataloged in a glossary by Stephenson in order to describe, among other things, historical events and architectural elements on the planet Arbe. As willing as I am to follow Stephenson's stories, the verbiage of the early pages of the book coupled with a series of complicated descriptions of structures - using heavily, of course, many of those words created by Stephenson in order to describe them - interspersed with nonchalant allusions to the history of his fictional planet, had me worried.
Shit, I was thinking, I hope Mr. Stephenson hasn't gone and written his Silmarillion.
Because, see, I view The Silmarillion as kind of an unintentional warning for science fiction and fantasy writers to not take the imagining of alternate worlds to the limit. (I am not a fan of Tolkien, but I have certainly known plenty of Tolkien fans in my life and not a single one of them has ever been able to plow through the totality of that thing.)
Now, having gotten a little futher along in Anathem, it occurs to me that I shouldn't have been so apprehensive. My favorite thing that Stephenson does with his writing is the showcasing of his uncanny insight into complex systems. He has the ability to describe them in terms that make them simple to understand without reducing them. In Cryptonomicon - my pick for the best book with the nerdiest title maybe ever - he does this both with the way codebreakers do their work as well as with the military chain of command. (And, you know, a dozen more times.)
There is a paragraph in Anathem, on page 41, in which Stephenson discusses an in-book historical figure, Proc, who is a kind of metaphysician:
"... Proc was the leading figure in a like-minded group called the Circle, which claimed that symbols have no meaning at all, and that all discourse that pretends to mean anything is nothing more than a game played with syntax, or the rules for putting symbols together. ..."
With this sentence, Stephenson has sold me my ticket. He has not only distilled, pretty much, the essence of what all those weirdoes are talking about when they discuss postmodern literary theory into a relatively simple statement, but he has also demonstrated, to me, that he may well be using the world that he has created within Anathem not as a self-contained thing, but as a commentary on the world in which he, the author, lives.
Saturday, September 06, 2008
That, Plus Word Jumbles, Comics, and Coupons
• Above, the Mystery Lady enjoys a digital sunset. (The Flickr page for this image? Right here, buddy.)
• Notes from the couple of art exhibits I've attended recently:
- Kehinde Wiley is a badass.
- Fahamou Pecou's deal where he paints these gigantic images of himself on the covers of various magazine is an ingenious ploy. I remember I heard about him when the Fader gave him some press after he, you know, made a painting of himself on the cover of the Fader.
- At the "Reset/Play" show at Arthouse, I saw an installation piece that made me think that if there's a market for this sort of thing, then B-Rett has all the materials necessary to become like the next Jeff Koons.
• From the "It's Fun to Pretend that You Care" file: I am, despite evidence to the contrary, hard at work on making new comic-type work for your enjoyment and perusal. In fact, I had a creative meeting with one S. Higginbotham today, so there should be a bunch of stuff pretty soon.
• I'm not big on blogs as written by celebrities, but I have decided to make an exception for Bai Ling's blog for the following reasons: 1. I don't know who Bai Ling is. 2. Her blog is either as unintentionally hilarious as Battlefield Earth or she's a secret genius. My favorite post so far is "I llook. Like a little sexy fox...... [sic]"
• Football season has started. So. Get used to "stories" like this "printed" here on CFY,K:
"Don't Fret, B-Rett"
While, yes, you just lost your number one stunner fantasy QB for the season, I wouldn't worry too much about it, especially if you can get Matt Cassel. Anybody with that much time in the pocket and Randy Moss to throw to is going to put up serious points every week. Also, if I was a betting man, I'd say that the Patriots may well sign recently-retired Daunte Culpepper. (Especially since mere moments after concocting this theory, I found out that it has legs on Wikipedia.)
Monday, September 01, 2008
Stay Low and Keep Firin'
• I don't know what it is, but I haven't been able to think of a new Bird Turds in a couple of weeks now. So, for the moment, you'll have to make do with dumb little pictures like the one above. (Original Flickr page here.) Also: today's post, as per usual, is pretty disjointed.
• So like I was saying, the Mystery Lady got me that book Maps and Legends. I had wanted the book since I first saw it, based on its incredible dust jacket, designed by Jordan Crane. I have, yes, literally judged this book by its cover, because I've never seen anything like it.
{Editorial Note: The following critique isn't an attempt by me to - if you don't mind another cliché - look a gift horse in the mouth. My favorite presents are like these, the ones that provoke examination and critical thought.}
The thing about Maps and Legends is that the essays in it are good. That dude Michael Chabon is no joke. What's more: I agree with him most of the time.
It's just, like. Let's imagine that Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines had been a good movie. It wasn't, really, but whatever. If Terminator 3 had followed The Terminator, it might've worked out, but it didn't. It followed Terminator 2: Judgement Day, an action movie that, in its day, changed the game. So. What I'm saying is is that even if Terminator 3 had been good, it would have had to have been as revolutionary as its immediate predecessor to be a success.
While Terminator 3 was, at least in my opinion, not a good movie, Chabon's writing in Maps and Legends is quite good. But it does sort of suffer from not being as mind-blowingly great as its cover, which, to me, not so much as a reader but as a consumer, immediately precedes the text.
On the other hand: Having read most of the essays in Maps and Legends, I am now aware of their quality. By which I mean, knowing what I know now, I would read the book whether or not Jordan Crane's cover was part of the deal. Initially, though, I would probably have never read any part of Maps and Legends had it not been for the cover. So. Either Jordan Crane has created a promise with his cover that, really, no writer could hope to fulfill for a reader, or he has simply created, like, the most effectively seductive dust jacket ever. Both, probably.
• On the strength of the following paraphrased statement, I think long-time reader B-Rett ought to be the official CFY,K political correspondent:'I might have to vote for John McCain now so that the stripping teacher from Varsity Blues will be the VP.'
• I remember a while back I was all whiny about - maybe my favorite "sequential artist" - Paul Pope's lack of content. I would like to now take this opportunity to once again tell Past Self to keep it because Pope's photostream is killing shit right now.
• I have always generally sucked at videogames, particularly Goldeneye-style death match joints. So I guess when I went to my dude Will's birthday Blazertag extravaganza, I should have known that my Oddjob-emulating Chuck Berry duckwalk strategy would only leave me miserably defeated. Alas.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Breathed On Wrong
• This is the view from outside my work. The cigarette view. I don't know if you can tell from this photo, but I love it because it looks like a real-life version of a streetscape that either Dan Clowes or Chris Ware might have drawn, in that everything is all soothingly geometrical and muted.
• You may have noticed the link down there for the Bird Turds site. It's, um. "In beta." I am now accepting ideas as to what to do with it and how to make it good. Either here or there.
• Speaking of Chris Ware, though, the other day The Mystery Lady bought for me a Quimby the Mouse figure and - and - that book Maps and Legends! She's the best ever.
• So, a while back, in issue #46, The Fader had this great Vinyl Archeology feature called "The End," in which Jimmy Tamborello - of Dntel and Postal Service fame - discussed, like, great songs to die to. (Looking at his website, it seems like he has remained pretty involved with that theme.) It's one of my favorite articles they've ever published, and not only because he's super spot-on with his selections. (Brian Eno's "An Ending (Ascent)?" Jack Nitszche's "Starman Leaves?" Come on. Those are perfect dying songs.) As a concept, it's a great conversation to have.
The other day me and the Rai Chile were talking about it, and he was like:
'Off the top of my head, that song that's playing in the background when Cameron does that 'When Cameron was in Egypt's land, let my Cameron go' thing would be a great song to die to.'
And thus began a search for what the hell that song is called that has lasted, so far, like 48 total hours.
I'm not talking about the lyrics. They come from "Go Down Moses." What I'm looking for is a full-length version of the lovely synth instrumental that plays behind the vocals. At this point I kind of doubt that such a thing exists, a suspicion shared by synth-guru Holotone, who cites the addition of harmonizing vocals as evidence that it's probably an incidental selection made by either Arthur Baker, Ira Newborn, or John Robie, the guys credited with providing original music for the movie.
Two final things about this:
1. You'd think that a guy like myself, who seriously based his whole life on Ferris Bueller's Day Off for many, many years would own a copy of the shit on DVD. Or, failing that, that if that same guy now worked at a video store, you'd think he'd at least have access to it. But I don't own it, and it's always checked out, so I can't do the simple thing and just check the damn credits.
2. The good thing about any worthwhile-yet-unsuccessful internet search is all the shit that you unintentionally find along the way. Like this original script I came across, which has a ton of dialog that didn't make the final cut. My favorite part:FerrisMy uncle went to Canada to protest the war, right? On the Fourth of July he was down with my aunt and got drunk and told my Dad he felt guilty he didn't fight in Viet Nam. So I said, "What's the deal, Uncle Jeff? In wartime you want to be a pacifist and in peacetime you want to be a soldier. It took you twenty years to find out you don't believe in anything?"(snaps his fingers)Grounded. Just like that. Two weeks.(pause)Be careful when you deal with old hippies. They can be real touchy.
It's like the search for the fuckin' Philosopher's Stone, only on like a way insignificant level.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Bird Turds #24
• Bird Turds #24 was made after watching the Spielberg / Cruise War of the Worlds, and wishing that something like this would happen in it. I remember sitting around with Thee Famous Person and a friend of hers years ago watching King of New York, and the friend being like, 'Wouldn't it be great if Christopher Walken just stopped right here and walked over and introduced the cameraman?' And it totally would've! That's how they ought to make movies.
• It's been slow-going here at CFY,K. I could blame this on any number of things, but, truthfully, my whole life has been put on hold since my man Holotone put me on to the N game.
• Aside from N, though, I don't usually play video games that much. (That said, this is probably already the most video game-heavy post I've ever made, and we've got a ways to go.) I do not own a gaming console. (I mean. I probably would. But I can't, at this juncture, even imagine what it would be like to be able to afford one.) The thing I've always thought about them is that an overwhelming number of them are set up like a fun house is at a carnival. You go here. Then this thing happens. Then you deal with that thing. Repeat.
It seems like, for the billion dollar industry that gaming has become, precious few designers are willing to, like, actively try and elevate the video game to anything that resembles, like, a work of art with an interactive narrative structure. One of those precious few is this dude Suda51. He's the guy who made Killer7, which was the weirdest, scariest, most enigmatic and engrossing video game I think I've ever seen.
Suda51 has a new game out now called No More Heroes, for the Wii. I just read a review for it on this website Noise to Signal, a website which also indulges in a great deal of Venture Bros wankery, which is how I found it. Now. I may never play No More Heroes. Because, again, I don't own a Wii. And the Noise to Signal guy kind of totally pans it. But I think it has the potential to be one of those moments where a weirdo-outsider does that thing where they kind of bring a genre to new heights through parody and pastiche. But, then again, it might be one of those moments where a weirdo-outsider has a really good idea and then isn't given the resources to properly execute it due to his weirdo-outsider status. (See also: Lost in La Mancha.)
I would like to reiterate my B-rett request: record yourself playing this shit and send me the tapes. (I can't afford a Wii, but I for sure own a VCR.)
• More video game crap:
This is one of the videos that comes up when you do a search for "asshole Mario" on YouTube. I think what I like so much about it is is not only the idea that whoever made this thing is also, in their own way, elevating a genre through parody and pastiche using an existing and well-known vocabulary, but also that, like. Even though you never see who's playing the thing, you can get a real sense of his or her frustration just by watching Mario. "Asshole Mario" is probably old news, but whatever. It's brilliant.
• And finally, from the Fucking Finally department: the internet delivers, at long last, the deleted scene from Iron Man featuring Ghostface.
Friday, August 08, 2008
Bird Turds #23
• As originally posted here. (Also, did you guys notice that little Flickr "badge" I got going on now as part of the CFY,K layout? Well. Scroll down a ways. It's there.)
• It's been a long-ass hot-ass day. So now I'm sitting under a ceiling fan, chain smoking, drinking real-sugar Coca-Cola, and basically living the dream for a minute.
• Paraphrased Conversation With B-rett, 8/8/08:
Me: Hey, buddy.
B-rett: {in robot voice} Hello. I am at work, but will gladly take some time off from Frets on Fire to speak to you.
Me: So, um ...
B-rett 9000: I am now in possession of a cooler shirt than you will ever have. Ha ha ha. I will e-mail you a photo of it with my camera eye and computer brain.
Me: Dude, I have that shirt. It's on my coffee table right now. We ordered them at the same time.
B-rett: {Makes some computer noises} Oh. Ha ha ha. You are correct.
Me: Did you see the new episode yet?
B-rett: No. I suck.
{Fin}
• In other news, our own President Isenhour has some impressive new work in a show right now.
• I would like to say, also, that, yes, I did receive an e-mail the other day from the best writer I know. I haven't gotten back to him yet because I am lazy and cannot seem to formulate the kind of communiqué that would be worthy of including in the future-release of Our Collected Electronic Correspondence.
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
As If It Can't Happen
• Production on Bird Turds took a little hiatus in the last week as I have been bird-sitting for an actual bird. His name is Turf, and he is hilarious. My responsibilities included making sure he had plenty of food and water, and protecting him from webcomic cats who wanted to eat him.
• Yesterday I woke up and made myself some fuckin' Franch toast.
• Glenn O'Brien, who, as you may know, is kind of a hero of mine, has his "10 Essentials" up over at Men.Style.com. I would've put this up sooner, but the website itself, with all of its popups and ads and crazy layout and color scheme is like the least stylish website I know of. I mean. I read it a lot. But it's so busy and distracting that I feel a little weird linking to it and in doing so foisting it upon my seven readers.
• My man Jush - who no longer reads this blog since he found this other blog - maintains that hip-hop died along with Biggie Smalls. For the record, I don't agree, but I begrudgingly respect his position. So the other day this dude DJ Semi put out Ready to Die: The O.G. Edition, which has demos, original beats, uncleared samples, and unheard lyrics from Frank White's debut LP, which serves to breathe new life into a certified classic and, for listeners like Jush, an entire genre.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Bird Turds #22
• Here's a new, thoroughly modern Bird Turds for your viewing pleasure.
• When I grow up, I want to be Saul Bass. He's another one of those guys, at least to me - and much like Charley Harper - where you're like "so that's the guy that did all that stuff."
• The Believer, which I rarely read because I want all information to be delivered to me by way of either comic strip or moving picture, has the best Jack White interview I think I've ever read. It's entirely on the subject of upholstery.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Another Extended Hiatus
• I was going to call this post "Don't Give Up On Me" because I haven't put anything here in a while, and also because it's a little reference to that Solomon Burke record of the same name, but then I thought that "Don't Give Up On Me" was a little too dramatic for, you know, a blog.
• I would like to quote the comment left by one "Daltonnw," who said, upon seeing these McCay-inspired DC Comics origin pages, "HOLY SHIT MY BRAIN JUST EXPLODED."
• I'm sure there's a lot to talk about. I just got back from a trip to my hometown. Jush was there. Rainuts, B-rett. My fam. It was rad. And right from jump I was eating extremely well.
• The Albarn/Hewlett team - of, of course, Gorillaz fame - has made a commercial for the upcoming summer Olympics. If you're not at least somewhat conflicted by the upcoming summer Olympics then you either haven't thought hard enough about it, or don't care - which is the same thing, I guess. But. You don't have to be conflicted about the commercial. Because it rules.
• Yesterday I took a hundo from Jush and, according to him, "shoved it up a wild goose's ass." We ended up with three Carls.
• I'll be right back after I make some Bird Turdses.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Bird Turds #21
• The above comic strip was inspired, in some ways, by Bill Watterson and this little one-panel joint. Also, The Bird is supposed to be holding two publications that have been seen around my place lately: In the Studio, by Todd Hignite, which is full of in-depth interviews with guys like Jaime Hernandez, R. Crumb, Chris Ware, and others. It's super good. And also, The Bird is supposed to be holding "Comic Art," which is published by - surprise! - Todd Hignite.
• What do you get when you cross Japanese Spider-Man with Serge Gainsbourg's "Comic Strip?" My guess: this.
• More soon.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Now With More About Books and Rap
• I don't know much, but I do know this: when Future Self wakes up tomorrow - at which point he will be Present Self - and sees that Present Self - who, by the same token, will have become Past Self - put a Doubleshot™ in the fridge he's gon' be full-on stoked.
• So I walked into this place Domy Books the other day. They got a good selection of art books and comic collections and a pretty decent fine art / street art high / low aesthetic. I guess. They were listening to Egg Radio, which was playing okay blog rock. It was at the same time pretty cool as well as further evidence that "hip" remains at a weird little stagnant standstill. (Full disclosure: they weren't hiring.)
• The Roc Boys trailer > the Roc Boys video.
• Somewhat related: A DVD collection of Busta Rhymes videos does not exist. I mean. As near as I can tell. Which is bullshit. Nobody ever worked a fisheye lens like Bus-a-Bus.
• Here's a piece that Lynda Barry wrote about the paintbush. To be honest, I'm not that into this article. I only put it on here because Lynda Barry wrote Cruddy, and Cruddy is a Higginbotham classic.
• You can now pay like 150 bucks for a watch I've been wearing for four years and paid thirteen dollars for. Only yours'll maybe be black. And will have cost you like 150 bucks.
Sunday, July 06, 2008
Bird Turds #20
• This little comic strip experiment, Bird Turds, now has twenty installments. It's weird because I really only thought I had a good enough idea for, you know, the first one. But now there's twenty of them, and I consider a few of them to be even funnier than the initial effort. So whatever. I'm sort of proud. Someone tell me how to go pro.
• What's more is that doing Bird Turds has revitalized my interest in comics in general. I spent, for instance, a sizable portion of last night belly laughing while reading Sam Henderson's ingenious Magic Whistle. Then this morning I started reading The Goon, and that shit is just unbelievably well done.
• The new episode of the Venture Bros is my new all-time favorite. I love that that happens damn near every time they make one.
• Nadal wins at Wimbledon. I win a Crabass bet. Everyone's happy. Except for Jush, who had to witness the devastation in hologram mode in the future history with color commentary provided by myself.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Bird Turds #19
• That there is Bird Turds #19, which S. Higginbotham describes as a "breakthrough." Thanks, Higginblatt!
• Asks B-rett: "Is it the most awesome shit ever?" To which I must respond: "Fuck yeah it is." (Go get your own. (Or something like it.))
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Get My Prince Hal On
• "Out of gas," to me, is second in Camdonispeak only to "critical."
• I smoke. You shouldn't smoke. Because smoking is bad for you. But I do it anyway, because smoking, all things considered, kicks the shit out of not smoking.
I have smoked a lot of cigarettes, and a lot of different kinds of cigarettes. And the long-discontinued Gitane Non-Blonde has achieved, for me, this sort of legendary Long Lost Best Cigarette Ever status. So much so that the Gitane Non-Blonde couldn't have possibly been as delightful a smoke as it is in my memory.
Recently I have come across a brand of cigarettes that reminded me of the Gitane Non-Blonde: the 555. I don't know what to call them, really. "Triple-Fives?" "Five Five Fives?" "Five Cubed is One Hundred and Twenty-Fives?" I don't care. They're great.
• Here's why I love the internet: because you can go from Drawn! to Comicrazys to a Flip the Frog cartoon on YouTube and it's, like, one of the more logical browsing progressions.
• The other day I mistakenly received the above postcard in my mailbox.
• I haven't heard it yet - and, to be honest, I may never - but looking at the setlist from Jason Schwartzman's guest DJ spot at KCRW, I'm thinking: he couldn't, from an aesthetic perspective, have picked any other songs. Unless he wanted to play a Kinks track. Or, like. The Rushmore soundtrack.
• I just want to say it, so that it is in print: at some point, a rapper will make a boast - in the same way that Shawn Carter once famously said the he had been spending hundreds "since they had small faces" - that sounds a lot like this: "I'm ballin' so hard I could buy a tank of gas or two." And I'm just saying. You heard it here first.
• I want these books.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Bird Turds #18
• Above is Bird Turds number eighteen. I feel weird about this one. Usually I try to run a week behind on Bird Turdses. Like, on purpose. I like to think that I always have one ready, just in case. This time, though, I'm posting a comic while my next two strips are in different stages of development. Number nineteen is having some timing issues. Twenty's in sketch-form. So I don't know.
• I just changed the logo and part of the design of CFY,K. I don't know if you noticed. Long-term readers of this here blawg - all three of you - are no doubt familiar with my usually-ill-advised website overhauls. This time around I figured I'd adopt a slower, more subtle approach to changing the look and feel of this thing. I've just been thinking for a while that that Cooper Black logo was looking a little dated. So now there's a new logo. And most of the links are grey.
You could read into this that Curtains For You, Kid, and by extension, The Devil Himself, is "going grey." And you wouldn't be too far off-base.
My gentle revamp of CFY,K has led me to a cautious consideration of the I Don't Know Em But I Read Em Section. (If you scroll down a little ways, it's on the right.)
The Devil Himself On the Subject of the "I Don't Know Em But I Read Em" Section In Descending Order:
Pulp Hope, any more, rarely gets updated. When it does, sometimes it rules. Other times it doesn't. And, again, I'm not into the vinyl toy scene, like, at all. But I wouldn't turn down one of Mr. Pope's new Masked Karimbah joints. I guess I'm saying: I am a tremendous fan of Paul Pope's sequential artwork. I'm just not that into his blog. Or, closer to the point, with all that he has going on, I'm not sure why he even has one.
I read Drawn all the time. Especially since CFY,K became much more heavily concentrated on comics and illustration than on rap music. (There is no reason to have a rap music blog these days. More on this later.) My only concern about Drawn is that two of its main contributors are going pro as fuck lately, and I'm a little curious as to how it will effect the website.
Bol, or Byron Crawford, has a website that I peruse from time to time. Not as much as I used to, though, since, you know, Mr. Crawford does not draw cartoons. But Bol drops truth bombs like no one else on the internets.
Until I just clicked on it, I can't even remember the last time I checked out Discobelle. Nothing personal. I'm just not that into it these days. It seems like it used to be a place where you could check for a remix or a mixtape jam back in the glory days of the Dipset. Now I don't know.
For me, and this is just me talkin', the dude over at Status Ain't Hood hasn't knocked one out the park for a minute. But I don't know. He probably has. A lot of these blogs and columns fall into disregard, on my part, based on my own ever-shifting sensibilities.
Music Thing has and always will be a great site for documenting some things that I have a passing interest in, but no real passion for, like synth stuff that I would have no idea how to use, 8-bit music, and homemade instruments. Every couple of months I spend like an hour on Music Thing, which, in Internet Time, is like a year.
In my opinion, the Fader - a magazine I have subscribed to in the past, and currently keep a collection of - is on the fall-off for a couple reasons. 1. Hipsters everywhere seem to be in a weird transitional period where they've - thankfully - stopped wearing day-glo everything, but haven't yet figured out what to do next. 2. The only means by which the editorial staff has figured out in terms of staying ahead of the indie rock internet dudes is promoting unlistenable garbage. I think the last "new sensation" they were only a little late on was Wale, but that was probably before 3. Nick Catchdubs quit.
Speaking of, Catchdubs had, at one point, a blog that was so goddamned good that he parlayed it into becoming an accomplished DJ/producer, journalist, and, now, boutique label exec. Because of these developments, he rarely updates his blog. I'm not hating. I just miss the old style where that kid Catch would write an entry on the enormous omelet sandwich and all sorts of other wild shit. Have a kick-ass blog → get busy doing other, actually-lucrative shit → let the blog suffer. This seems to be the way it works. Unless you're me.
That said, I hope that the fine folks behind Jesus Piece and Copy, Right? have moved on to other cool shit. Because they're defunct now.
I don't really read Palms Out Sounds much anymore, since they seem to have stopped doing Sample Wednesdays, which was like the whole reason I was into it in the first place. (And then the last one they did was on Armand Van Helden, and who gives a shit?) Palmsout suffers, I think, from having to concentrate on way more electronic music than hip hop, which owes directly to this: Nah, Right, right now, is, like it or not, fucking clearly the definitive hip hop blog on the internets. So everyone else is sort of outmoded. I will say that the Remix Sundays that Palmsout still does usually have one banger in there somewhere.
In sum: I need some new shits in the links department.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Best Video Ever
• I can't even really comment on this except to say that delivering it took some finagling on my part, it's the funniest damned thing I have ever seen, and that there's a lot of really loud curse words.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Turd of Prey [part two of two]
• As you may have noticed, the above comic strip is Bird Turds #17, part two of two of the Turd of Prey "storyline." It is also, right now, my personal current favorite of the Bird Turds series.
• Speaking of current personal favorites, this website Colorflip is addictive in the weirdest possible way. I love it.
• So. After a couple of years of mixtape / featured appearance output simply too, um, bountiful to effectively link to in any way, a couple of false starts that resulted in the loss of what should have been a couple of great singles, and a few weeks of press that included a leak of Gaussian proportions and a (!) five part anticipatory YouTube series, Tha Carter III has finally dropped. I'm kind of reserving comment, since (a) I'm obviously biased, (b) most of my readers don't care anyway, and (c) the people who do care have, I think, their expectations set so high that Dwayne could deliver The Blueprint and they wouldn't be satisfied. What I will say is that there are some tracks on Tha Carter III that are as good or better than anything Weezy's ever done before. And also that I'm curious as to how well it sells.
Saturday, June 07, 2008
So Submits This Devil
• I don't know if you can tell, but since last Sunday my Venture Bros mania is back in full swing. Go watch the new episode 'cause you can't wait either.
• I am at the moment coming down from the first genuine shoe high I've been on since the heyday of Nike SB. (Wale, on that track "The Hype" on that mixtape I've been telling you about, puts it around 2005.) I just copped some gently-used loafers from a secondhand store for well under fifty American dollars. Given that I've been seeking out precisely such a pair of shoes for almost a year now, and that I'd get less utility out of and spend more on a tank of gas, I'd say it was a sound purchase. To celebrate, I prepared for myself a light, healthy repast.
• I just watched Mailer on Mailer. I've been thinking about making a (non Bird Turds) comic strip featuring him, so I figured a movie wherein Mailer discusses his life and work at length would be worth watching. Like, if I'm going to fictionalize him in my own stupid crap, I was thinking, I probably ought to expose myself to a broader swath of his intellect than just The Fight, which is the Mailer work I find most enjoyable probably just because it deals with subject matter that I'm already all nuts about. This movie I just saw, though, basically just reinforced what I already kind of thought about Mailer: his true value as an author is that his occasionally impossibly grandiose statements are perfect for taking and presenting in a new context. Take the title of this post, for instance. I did.
• Wait wait wait. Hold the fuck on. Did Jay-Z just hijack a Lil Wayne beat in order to compare himself to a former poet laureate in the first line? Because that's what it sounds like to me.
(Also, and I'm not saying I know the future or nothin', I'm just saying. Who got you onto Charles Simic before his ass became the American poet laureate? I even put him on your mixtape. Shit.)
• Lately I've been reading this book Spook Country which is kind of the sequel - although I'm never sure that the word "sequel" should be applied to books - to this book that I love. Today I came across the following passage:"'It implements finite difference methods for the solution of partial differential equations, on block-structured, adaptively refined rectangular grids.'"
Even typing it out just now has in no way helped me to understand what in the fuck that means. I called the Rai Chile, who is a math nerd, to see if he could help me out, but his stupid phone died before I could even tell him about it.
Monday, June 02, 2008
Bird Turds #16
• The above is Bird Turds number sixteen, "Turd of Prey part one of two." But you knew that, because it says that. Not to overanalyze it or anything (that's more of a me and S. Higginbotham telephone activity, anyway), but I, like, learned some valuable lessons while making this one. Chiefly, that the grey Pentel brush pen will not magically turn you into Will Eisner. But then I also learned / decided that it would be better to present it as is than it would be after photoshopping the shit out of it.
• And now, "A Conversation Between The Devil Himself and an Imagined Reader, Part One of Two."
IR: What's going on with everything being presented in two parts today?
{Here The Devil Himself mumbles unintelligibly and takes a drag from a Camel light. Camel lights are not his brand, it should be noted, but he got the pack for free so whatever.}
IR: Um. Okay. I was really wondering whether or not you were going to embed the season three premier of the Venture Bros on CFY,K.
TDH: I am abosolutely not going to do that, based soley on the idea that I don't want the new Bird Turds to be completely outclassed on its own shit. But you should totally watch it. It's awesome as hell.
IR: Anything else?
TDH: Um. Yes. Those shirts you want totally exist. Mine's on the way.
• I was wondering how long it was going to take Glenn O'Brien to do a full-on Warhol issue of Interview. (Caution! Clicking the "Interview" link will cause browser-resizing and annoying audio.) And now I know. (I'm not hating. If you're going to do a full-on Warhol issue of anything, it ought to be Interview, and you ought to be Glenn O'Brien.)
• And now, "A Conversation Between The Devil Himself and an Imagined Reader, Part Two of Two."
IR: I heard that Tha Carter III leaked.
TDH: So?
IR: So are you going to post a link to it?
TDH: No way. Buy that shit. Wale's new mixtape is for free and it's awesome. Go get that.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Bird Turds #15
• Here is Bird Turds number fifteen, in which the main character bird continues to have kind of a weird relationship with all other birds with whom he or she comes into contact, be they sentient or inanimate within the context of the comic strip itself.
Also, I kind of love the Drinking Bird, in that I bet that that Miles V. Sullivan cat never had to do anything else after he made it. What a badass.
• It turns out there were way more people aware of the CFY,K technical-difficulty downtime than I would have thought. So, um. Again. Sorry about that. But it's good to have you back, dudes.
• I hear tell that Shaved and Shamanzo had a little old NYC Sarchichan mini-summit. Somebody send pictures. And anyway I live at a midpoint music hub these days and I ain't got friends really so come visit. Also: Isn't it Nebraska's birthday today? Happy birthday, Nebraska.
• In making this post, I will have gotten everything done that I wanted to have gotten done on my day off. I did my laundry, and, in so doing, conducted further market research for my dream to one day own and operate a coin laundry. And I put away the laundry, which, as I'm sure you know, is like a whole additional, more-horrible chore in and of itself .
Also I finally got it together and went to see Iron Man, which completely fucking ruled. I will say that I was as disappointed as the next guy that Dennis Coles didn't make the final cut of the movie. I guess it's kind of cool that it looked like a Ghostface video was playing in Tony Stark's private jet towards the beginning. More than anything, though, I'm at a loss as to why the cameo that Ghostface shot for Iron Man hasn't leaked online as near as I can tell. Because, really, what the hell is the internet good for if I can't watch a leaked Ghostface cameo?
• Today I was on the phone with the Rai Chile and he told me that instead of investing his money into a Nintendo Wii, he's going to buy those running jump-stilt joints and then run his ass to work. Now, if you know the Rai Chile, just for a second imagine that you're stopped at a traffic light or something, and then he fucking comes leap running past you all wearing one of those aerodynamic bike helmets and goggles and a full-blown lycra bodysuit. And like a super-determined look on his face like he's doing the damn thing. Or even, better, with all that going on and like a long-stemmed rose clenched in his teeth. Just thinking of these scenarios made me laugh so hard I almost threw up.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
I'm swimming across the county.
• I was just looking over the last few posts, and it became apparent to me that I have been too consistently subjecting my readers to my bad illustration attempts. So for today I'm putting up this bad photograph instead. Heh.
• You might not have noticed, because it happened over Memorial Day weekend, but CFY,K was down for a little while there. After using the coding equivalent of a crowbar, I managed to get in there and eff with the HTML enough to alleviate the bizarro script malfunction that had caused the whole thing. Maybe it was my fault. Perhaps I was doing it wrong. But either way, I'm not using those little embedded flash mp3 players anymore, and am going back to the old-fashioned, direct-to-mp3 link, like this one, which will take you to an audio file of valuable advice from Ghostface Killah.
• Here is some video evidence, just in case you forgot that Prince is, indeed, the most underrated guitar shredder in the world.
• Also, if Vice Magazine is ever going to, you know, come back around in such a way that they start being cool again - which will require that they stop being an American Apparel catalog and avoid turning into Paste Magazine - it's going to start with articles like this one about John Cheever. (Who, yes, wrote that short story that became that movie that I love.)
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Bird Turds #14
• Here it is: Bird Turds number fourteen, in honor, of course, of The Red Fantastic's generous donation.
• I don't know if you can tell, but I have been watching shit tons of the greatest show that has ever been on television. If you want, you can watch my favorite scene from the series.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Fewer Hold-Me-Backs Every Day
• Last weekend I broke down and bought the entire sixteen-issue run of Kid Eternity from Vertigo.
The deal with Kid Eternity is that, like, he was fishing or something when a U-Boat blew up his boat, but when he got to Heaven it was determined by, you know, The Powers That Be that the kid had died before he was supposed to so they sent him back to Earth with the power to resurrect any historical figure he felt like by shouting the word "eternity." There's also this monk/angel guy that hangs out with him called the Keeper.
Then, in the early 90's, The Kid got brought back for a delightfully unreadable three-part miniseries by Grant Morrison. A year or two later, Vertigo gave Kid Eternity his own monthly title, which seemed to have been designed to be a more-accessible comic book, but loosely within the parameters that Morrison established. Kid Eternity was canceled after sixteen issues because no one liked it but me, and it ain't hard to tell why. In the comic, the Kid is constantly surrounded by a rotating cast of flat characters whose only purpose appears to be to relentlessly spew the kind of pseudo-intellectual claptrap that I can only imagine I found to be entertaining fifteen years ago.
Now, though, I find Kid Eternity entertaining on an entirely different level. I like that the Kid is surrounded by these idiots and caricatures and their monologues because I have a powerful resistance to these things, and so, probably in spite of the intentions of the comic's writer, does the Kid. He just wants to be Plastic Man, but the people around him won't let him. That, and Sean Phillips occasionally wrecked shit. (Not to mention the kind of hilarious WWII propaganda aspect of Kid Eternity's origin story.)
• I figure that since it's Saturday you're probably not at work, so maybe today you can hear some audio, watch a video, and maybe look at a picture of a woman in a bathing suit.
Audio: a lesser-known Digital Underground joint I was listening to around the same time I was initially reading Kid Eternity.
Video: the single greatest interview with a rapper probably ever.
Women in bathing suits: Audrina in a bikini, posted here because Jush just got the internet.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Bird Turds 13
• Here is Bird Turds #13. Stay tuned to CFY,K for for next week's pro-themed Bird Turds #14. Unless you're The Red Fantastic, in which case you should stay tuned to your mailbox for next week's pro-themed Bird Turds #14.
Friday, May 09, 2008
Fantastic Red Fantastic
• I woke up the other day knowing that I had to change my front driver's side tire, which kind of sucked, but was way better than, like, finding out in the morning that you have a flat tire and then you have to get all sweaty before you go into work. So I put on my spare tire, which was also flat, and rode to the end of the block to buy a used tire, which, you know, cost money. It was a less-than-spectacular morning. (Read: early afternoon.)
But then I got back to my apartment and found that less than twenty-four hours after I had made a half-serious quasi-request, the lovely Red Fantastic had supplied me with a Flickr pro account! Day saved!
I'm thinking:
1. The Red Fantastic is the coolest.
2. I gotta grindstone on some new Bird Turdses and set up a damn Amazon Wish List or some shit.
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Bird Turds 12
• I seem to have gone a week without posting a new Bird Turds. Sorry about that, dudes. So here's one. (It's not that I didn't have one ready, of course. I think that the readers of Curtains For You, Kid have grown accustomed to a greater degree of professionalism than that, right?)
• I'm not sure what having a Flickr pro account does for a person, exactly. And if I had one, I would almost certainly never take full advantage of it. What's weird is that if you have a Flickr account, you can buy a pro upgrade for any other Flickr user. So, it's not that I want one, really, but I will say that whoever buys me a Flickr pro upgrade will get an original Bird Turds comic strip, which I can nearly guarantee will never be worth as much as you'd spend on said upgrade.
• I went, the other day, to this live satellite presentation of This American Life.
Until I actually arrived on the scene, I thought it was going to be, like, a live performance of This American Life. Like they do with Whad'ya Know?, but it wasn't. So I did not, in fact, get to see the condensation on Ira Glass's glasses.
{Never let what you consider to be a good line go to waste, eh? - Ed.}
The place, a movie theater south of town, was packed. It was so crowded, in fact, that this woman had to scoot two seats over closer to me to accommodate this guy and his kid.
And then the show started.
And then the theater lost the video portion of the satellite feed. This made the experience, you know, exactly like sitting in the dark listening to the radio with like 300 groaning, muttering strangers. The audio, which was to accompany a preview segment from the second season of the This American Life TV show, soldiered on.
"I think," said the lady next to me, "that if I keep staring at the screen, and, you know, focusing, then the video will come back on."
"That'll either work or it won't," I said, "but it will be impossible to tell."
"You know," said the guy on the other side of the lady, "it's bad enough that I can't see what's going on. Now I can't even hear it."
So whatever. We shut up. Because, you know, at least on my end, I get it. You paid a lot of money to be here. So far be it from me to fuck it up for you.
But then, a minute later, the video came back, like everyone knew it eventually would. And then the good folks in the projectionists' room "rewound" the feed, so everyone could see the show in its entirety. Which, I mean, shit. All of this was bound to happen. Every theater manager I've ever met - and I have known a few - would much rather yell at some high school kid for ten minutes than deal with several hundred angry NPR enthusiasts.
"Hey, look," said the lady next to me to the guy next to her, "Now you can see all that stuff you missed."
But he wasn't feeling it. So when, a few minutes later, the vertical hold fucked up for a little while, he seized the opportunity the storm off and demand a refund, which was fine with everyone.
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