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.)

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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.

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Just Make 'Em All

• The above is Bird Turds number seven. I think I did this one before, but it got lost in the move. I've always liked the way that ApeLad over at Hobotopia - author of the always remarkably well executed Laugh Out Loud Cats - draws little birds. So I tried to draw some like that.

• In other news: say it ain't so, Mr. Mora.

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Corndog Victory in the Final Seconds

• What I think is funny is the idea that having a degree in English makes a person somehow less able to communicate with the people around them in the world. Like. I wrote this little thing for my friend the other day, just a little write-up to appear in a local publication, about 150 words, and I honestly had no idea how to do it. Perhaps I'm only capable of long-winded and convoluted academic critiques. And half-assed blog posts. (I mean. I did it, and did it happily, as my friend is the hardest-working person I have ever met in terms of charity. She really, actually, thinks globally and acts locally, which is a rare thing, despite the proliferation of bumper stickers intended to convey that same philosophical message. What I'm trying to say is that writing that 150-word thing was way more difficult than a longish paper, but it took a while for me to say that, because I have an English degree and therefore have a hard time saying anything.)

• So, um. Lil Wayne got arrested. But I guess it's cool now. Or something.

• Speaking of Lil Wayne, and other rap-related news, what the hell happened with Still Listen To Gangsta Music? That shit was my favorite. I'm beginning to think that whoever made that blog is secretly, actually Cam'ron, and has, as such, disappeared from the face of the earth. Luckily, my dude over at Jesus Piece still holds it down.

• Rave-on sends me links to good stuff like small-time producers send Kanye soul records to sample. This one's good, about an art collective that moved into the mall. Although I must say that living in the mall sounds like the place I would like to live least. But whatever. Art kids and their damn statements.

• I have not finished Marisha Pessl's book. Nor have I fully explored that book's website. But even a cursory perusal of these things suggests that Pessl is pretty, pretentious, and approximately half as talented as she thinks that she is. I think we ought to get married. (My book, for the record, seems to be selling for upwards of one hundred dollars. Take that, suckas!)

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