Astro Dude Print

Been working on a illustration for Allegra Gellar and their upcoming show. I thought a Guitar with a Keytar would be a pretty sweet visual. You can see the stand alone print I'll make, the band print and a detail at 100%. Lot's of funky half toning!

Scary stuff

Giving corporations an outsized voice in elections - latimes.com

Corporations are pitching a bizarre product -- a radical vision of the 1st Amendment. It would give corporations rather than voters a central role in our electoral process by treating corporate political spending as protected speech. If this vision becomes reality, businesses and other big-money players will spend billions either hyping their preferred candidates or running attack ads against elected officials who don't support their preferred agenda. Voters will be forced into a couch-potato role, mere viewers of the electoral spectacle bought and paid for by wealthy companies.

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later

But the problem is a real one, not a mere intellectual game. Because today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups—and the electronic hardware exists by which to deliver these pseudo-worlds right into the heads of the reader, the viewer, the listener. Sometimes when I watch my eleven-year-old daughter watch TV, I wonder what she is being taught. The problem of miscuing; consider that. A TV program produced for adults is viewed by a small child. Half of what is said and done in the TV drama is probably misunderstood by the child. Maybe it's all misunderstood. And the thing is, Just how authentic is the information anyhow, even if the child correctly understood it? What is the relationship between the average TV situation comedy to reality? What about the cop shows? Cars are continually swerving out of control, crashing, and catching fire. The police are always good and they always win. Do not ignore that point: The police always win. What a lesson that is. You should not fight authority, and even if you do, you will lose. The message here is, Be passive. And—cooperate. If Officer Baretta asks you for information, give it to him, because Officer Beratta is a good man and to be trusted. He loves you, and you should love him.

Snow!

_MG_2689 copy _MG_2693 copy

_MG_2697 copyJust took a few snaps last night of the snow that hit us. The wife was none too pleased, lol!

I knew somethign was up.

Current Decade Rates as Worst in 50 Years: Overview - Pew Research Center for the People & the Press

As the current decade draws to a close, relatively few Americans have positive things to say about it. By roughly two-to-one, more say they have a generally negative (50%) rather than a generally positive (27%) impression of the past 10 years. This stands in stark contrast to the public’s recollection of other decades in the past half-century. When asked to look back on the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, positive feelings outweigh negative in all cases.

The failure of Obama

Drew Westen: Leadership, Obama Style, and the Looming Losses in 2010: Pretty Speeches, Compromised Values, and the Quest for the Lowest Common Denominator

To be honest, I don't know what the president believes on anything, and I'm not alone among American voters. He introduced his recent job summit by saying that even in these times, the role of government should be limited. Really? That was a nicely nuanced reinforcement of the ideology of limited, ineffective government promulgated by Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Unfortunately, it runs against all the available data and everything Democrats have stood for since FDR.

Abortion? Who knows. Gays? I suspect intellectually he believes in equal rights but deep down he thinks they're icky. Something is sure holding him back from doing the obvious. Immigrants? He probably has an opinion, but he's not going to waste political capital on them; he sold them out in 15 seconds on health care. Foreclosures? Nice speeches, and I'm sure it really concerns him when he hears the stories of families firsthand. But not enough to divert the cash from the lenders to the borrowers. And the problem is, the average American knows it. Job creation? Would be nice, and I presume he believes that people who want to work ought to be able to work. But when 700,000 people were losing their jobs a month in his first few months of office and over millions have lost their jobs on his watch (a process, of course, initiated by his predecessor, whose name, to my knowledge, he has not uttered since entering office), three letters should have come to mind: W - P - A. President Roosevelt had no legs to stand on, but he sure had spine.

And an entire generation disillusioned, will never vote again...

New Painting studies

[gallery link="file" columns="2"] Was messing around with some of my old Paintings yesterday and ended up getting sucked back into that way of thinking. Here are two studies I have been working on most of the night and this morning. They are not fully there yet, but I am really enjoying this direction. I need to work on showing a bit more detail and getting the images to smear more at the same time. It does feel more like I am working with oil paint this time around.

Tape art

Mark Khaisman: Tapeworks | Diskursdisko

My works are large archetypal representational images, made from layer upon layer of translucent packing tape, applied to clear Plexiglas and placed in front of a light box to give the image shadow and depth. I see my tape art as a form of painting. The 2-inch tape acts as a wide brush, and the light behind the panels as an alchemist’s luminous blending medium. In working with tape, like in painting, accident and control are always present.

International Grey

international Portrait Shot a portrait for the band in the danklife studio. You can also find more info on us here:

International Grey on Facebook.

International Grey on MySpace.

And the main site here.

We just finished tracking 6 songs in the studio and are hoping to release a EP by the end of the month. Or the start of the new year.

First frost

[gallery link="file" columns="2"] Woke up this morning to some frost and the patio table we have had some cool patterns on it. So in the vein of Minor White I thought I'd throw a slaved flash under the table and shoot through the frost with a macro. Fun stuff.

But yeah, Frost... it's freaking cold.

Music

Dear Musicians – Please Be Brilliant or Get Out of The Way | pampelmoose Dave Allen of Gang of Four's Music and Media Blog

I have long argued that musicians need to drop the notion of making money from CD sales through record labels and concentrate on making money from the experiential awareness that surrounds their brand; a brand they own, no one else. The downside to this for musicians is that they need to get organized and work hard, or arrange for what I call the “fifth Beatle” to help with online communications, selling merchandise etc. Consider this from Russell Davies

Creating music is only the first step to creating something valuable and timeless. For instance, David Byrne played a building. Music released as part of an event is the future – Radiohead’s release of In Rainbows was the first step toward the album release as event, if it’s an album at all.. How it’s done is also important. The container has changed forever. Remember what Rishad Tobaccowala has to say to advertising agencies trying to embrace the social web – “The future does not fit in the containers of the past.” It is no different for bands.