I've had it up to here.

So I'm going on vacation up the Oregon coast with my brats and my wife for a week.

See you in July.


"Would you just get in the goddamn car?"

Brats in Hats

Ruby. In a hat!



Owen. In a hat!

25 Fun Facts about Teen Heart Throb Kim Jong Il !!!

Absolute Power in an Adorable Package!!

1. Kim Jong Il spends two hours a day standing in front of a mirror in wooly chaps and a large cowboy hat, practicing the English phrase “Howdy! I’m a cowpoke!”

2. Kim Jong Il respects Funkedelic, but thinks Parliament is straight up jam for getting the hos partying all retarded.

3. Kim Jong Il is in AA, and attends the meetings at Pyongyang Double Tree under the pseudonym of Freddy. He doesn’t actually go in. He sits outside in his ZiL limousine chugging Hennessey.


4. Kim Jong Il supported himself through Pyongyang University playing tambourine in a Jimmy Buffet coverband.

5. Kim Jong Il has a crack team of scientists working to get his cow to lactate chocolate milk.

6. Kim Jong Il is talking to the Jenny Craig people about helping his population eat right for once.

7. Kim Jong Il weeps whenever he hears 2 Live Crew’s “Me so horny”, because he is.

8. Britney Spears was all hot to lose her virginity to Kim Jong Il, but he gently explained that her maidenhead was her pillar of light. So they just dry humped.

9. Kim Jong Il is the baritone in the Old Time Pyongyang Barbershoppe Rascals Quartert. For performances, he wears Stalin’s actual Moustache.

10. Kim Jong Il feels that Woody Allen lost the thread on “Might Aphrodite” and told him as much in the steam room at New York’s famous Racquetball Club.

11. Kim Jong Il is largely silent of the issue of the essence of Christ’s nature in 5th Century Nestorianism, which is kind of odd, considering that was the subject of his Master’s Thesis.

12. The highest price ever paid for a Leroy Neiman painting in auction was US$2,000,000. It was a painting of Olympic swimmer Mark Spitz eating a piece of pie. The purchaser? Kim Jong Il, of course! Who’d you think?

13. Kim Jong Il is really super good at drawing princesses on hills with unicorns and rainbows.

14. In Politburo meeting, no one says shit until Kim Jong Il opens the meeting with a quick “Konichiwa, bitches” and a double flipped-bird.

15. To assuage the fears of the female portion of the North Korean population, Kim Jong Il received a Brazilian wax on live TV. He ate Rollos throughout the procedure, then got up and did the Electric Slide nude. The nation fell in love with Kim Jong Il all over again.

16. While taking a bubble bath, Kim Jong Il was reciting the L’Trimm joint, “We Like the Cars that Go Boom” as he scrubbed his corns with a loofah. (”We like the cars, the cars that go boom, We're Tigre and Bunny and we like the boom.” ) An aide overheard him and subsequently production of missile-launcher mounted trucks increased ten fold in the following months.

17. Kim Jong Il wishes Radio Pyongyang would please play something besides James fucking Blunt for five goddamn minutes.

18. At the end of 18 holes, Kim Jong Il likes nothing better than choking his caddy to death.

19. If his regime ever falls in the dustbin of history, Kim Jong Il can always fall back on his urinal sanitary cake empire.

20. Kim Jong Il fears only one man: Argentinean footballer
Diego Maradona. The Little Director will spontaneously urinate at the mention of Maradona’s name.

21. Kim Jong Il wonders when Hennessey is going to come out with a Summer cooler.

22. Kim Jong Il has dedicated the current five year plan to stamping out husbands who aren’t willing to let their ladies call the shots in the sack once in awhile. Also, he’d like to torture a bunch of people.

23. Kim Jong Il thinks to the best way to turn North Korea’s image around is to stop calling them concentration camps and start calling them Funk-a-tronic Git Down and Make Love camps

24. Kim Jong Il’s favorite card trick:

Needed materials:

Standard deck of Bicycle Cards
A concentration camp

Approach your mark. Shuffle the deck conspicuously

You: “Pick a card.”

Mark picks a card.

You: “Is your card a Nine of Clubs?”

Mark: “No”

You: “Wrong answer, fuck-o.”

Send mark to concentration camp.

25. Kim Jong Il has crabs.

Peter: Film maker, ice hockey-type person

Here's another installment in my thrilling attempt to force people I know to write my blog for me. Check out the rest of the profiles over at Some People I Know.

Holy shit! Peter made a goddamn movie! Now, we all have our little scrubber friends who make their little three-minute long, pathos-filled montage of winos and Autumn leaves. Well, those movies suck because they're boring and stupid, and the friends who made them are your flakiest, most douchebaggie friends, the kind you know will drift out of your life after a year or two.

This is not that sort of movie, and Peter, while a douchebag, is not flaky.

Because Peter made a goddamn MOVIE that PLAYED IN THEATERS on SCREENS that HAS JOKES and it even has a star in it, albeit one that you might not of heard of (Jim Gaffigan!).

The film is called "No Sleep 'Til Madison". It's about some thirty something guys, roadtripping across Wisconsin during the state high school ice hockey playoffs.

Of course it's actually about death and homosexual longing, as are all films. You can check out the official site here.

So come join me as I ask Peter about his film, his love of Fon du Lac and his son's thing for the Wicked Witch.

G: When did you write the screenplay?

P: I wrote the script with Erik Moe, another Wisconsin refugee, back in the summer of 1999. Erik had a TV development deal at the time with Universal Studios in LA. We'd spend all week on the phone exchanging notes, then I'd fly down from San Francisco on weekends, where we'd hole up in his studio lot office and write like the wind. It was a fun, amazingly productive process. We'd take turns at the keyboard while the other person paced and acted out lines. We were surprisingly dedicated to the task, and a first draft of the script was written very quickly.

G: Was it based on anyone you know or heard about? Do people really give a shit about Wisconsin High School hockey?

P: The script was inspired by our mutual obsession with Wisconsin High School Hockey, an obsession that has proven difficult to explain to the uninitiated. We've had people tell us it's just an exaggerated form of homesickness. Others have explained it as a longing for a highly romanticized, less follicularly-challenged version of ourselves. I think it's the uniforms. Whatever the reasons, Erik and I are devoted to high school hockey, sometimes to the chagrin of the coworkers we harangue into participating in our annual February Madness High School Hockey Pool. So one night I called Erik with a brilliant idea: Why not fly back to Wisconsin and follow the state tourney for a week? Take in games in exotic locales like Eagle River and Fon du Lac? He too thought the idea inspired; our wives did not. So I came up with Plan B: Let's take a long a video camera and make a documentary about the journey. Erik went one better: Let's make a movie. And that's when we started mapping out a story.

G: How did you get Jim Gaffigan?

P: Erik had worked with Jim on some hilarious but never-aired TV spots, where Jim played a guy so obsessed with the Energizer bunny that his whole life revolved around preparing for the day when the Bunny finally ran out of gas. Spots showed Jim taking drum lessons, sewing his own bunny suit, etc. Swap high school hockey for the Energizer bunny and you had Owen Fenby, the hero of our movie. So Erik sent Jim the script, and he was very enthusiastic about giving it a go. The glasses Owen wears in the movie are the same glasses Jim wore in high school.

G: If Tom Hanks is "A" list, what letter would you assign Gaffigan? Like a "C"?

P: At the time Jim was an extremely successful commercial actor with a burgeoning stand up career and a development deal with David Letterman's Worldwide Pants. Not a household name, but definitely in the "where have I seen that guy before?" category. Since then his stand up career has really taken off, and he’s getting a lot of acting work, too. His Comedy Central special airs all the time, and his DVDs and CDs are top sellers. He’s friggin’ hilarious, by the way, and a real pleasure to work with.

G: Which film festivals has N.S.T.M appeared in?

P: No Sleep appeared in 17 festivals, but none of the “famous” ones. The festival circuit was yet another bizarre chapter in No Sleep’s history. In one city we'd have people lined up around the block to see the movie; another was held in a dinner theatre where we drank ourselves senseless while the only other people in the audience, an elderly couple from Marco Island, Florida, shouted nacho orders to a waitress.

G: Did you finance it with credit cards?

P: The credit card approach to filmmaking is never a good idea. Your chances of ever seeing a return on the money invested in a truly independent film are so remote, that it’s just plain stupid to put your financial future in jeopardy just so you can stave off getting a real job for another six months. My advice: If you can't get the financing without credit cards, write a book instead. Or shoot on video (an option that was not readily available when we started production). We tried to be fairly responsible about the money situation. We sold shares in a limited partnership. Luckily, the Blair Witch Project had just come out, which made it easier for to raise funds. We were able to meet our production goal fairly quickly, thanks to a lot of incredibly generous friends and family members (none of whom talk to us anymore).

G: What indie films did you get inspiration from?

P: A few weeks before shooting, Erik and I flew back to Wisconsin to start scouting locations. It was February in Wisconsin, and we were just starting to realize how in over our heads we were, when we saw Chris Smith's American Movie at the Point 6 Cinema. For 107 glorious minutes, we completely forgot about our own problems and instead laughed at Mark Borchardt’s attempts to make his own low budget film. Talk about your inspiration. It’s a fantastic documentary. And made in Wisconsin, no less.

G: What other sort of writing have you done? More screenplays?

P: Prior to No Sleep, I had done some other screenwriting on two other indie films: the voiceover narration for a film called Road Kill with Jennifer Rubin, and a co-writing credit on This Space Between Us with Jeremy Sisto and Poppy Montgomery. Erik has written a bunch of TV pilots and had several screenplays optioned. We recently collaborated on another screenplay, set in the dot com glory days of the late 90s, but after some initial interest, it’s currently in the dead letter office.

In terms of other writing, Erik has written a cult favorite “cartoon” book called Tales of a Young Urban Failure (Note from Greg:a funny, though sadly out of print, book), while I've had some success in the fiction genre with a few short stories. Lately I've been trying out some memoir-type pieces in the David Sedaris meets Frederick Exley vein, and I have this idea of writing a book-length memoir of the making of No Sleep, which I think could be a movie in itself. I understand it's a total cliché: the copywriter aspiring to be "real" writer thang, but it keeps me from growing annoyingly bitter.

G: You ever play D&D?

P: I have never played D&D, though I will admit to some intense sessions of knee hockey played in the basement of Ivo Knezevic's childhood home. Not too nerdy, unless you consider the participants were all in their early thirties, a few made posters promoting their imaginary teams, and one of them cried when he lost in overtime.

G: I really, really want to include the bit about your son getting a boner watching Sleeping Beauty

P: First of all, it's not Sleeping Beauty; it's Wizard of Oz. Second, it's not Dorothy who causes the erection; it's the Wicked Witch of the West. Third, there's nothing strange about a four-year-old getting a boner every time he sees the witch; it's a testament to the power of film, and of man's innate desire to chase the "bad girl."

Hugh: illustrator, anarchist, cider drinker, bike rider

Here's the second chat with an interesting friend. From here on out I'll be posting these interview simultaneously at a new blog
Some People I Know. I have a couple of folks lined up, and if you know something interesting and you'd like to contribute let me know.

In this entry friend Hugh offers up a mea culpa of sorts for the WORST THING HE'S EVER DONE.

I've know Hugh for 14 years or so. He was the art director of the US office of Lonely Planet Publications, a travel guide publisher I worked poorly at in the early '90s.

(Really, I was a fucking liability at my job.)

Hugh has since tranformed into OMAC, a One Man Army Corps of activism, illustration and dressing like an old man. Not one to sit by and shake his fist at the TV (he doesn't own one), Hugh consistently goes out and DOES STUFF to change things that are rotten and for that I'm proud that I know him. A singular chappie. You can see some samples of his boombastic illustrations over at Hugh Illustration.

Here's THE WORST THING HUGH HAS EVER DONE.

Hugh:

You wanted to know the worst thing I ever did, so here it is:

In the Year of Our Lord '91, I was finishing up my last semester of art school. There was this guy I knew, a pretty good painter, we'll call him "Greg". For some reason, I was a complete and total shit to Greg that year, and I've been carrying around the guilty weight ever since.

I guess Greg got on my nerves a bit, although we were friends and were part of the same scene. His only crime, if I remember correctly, was speaking confidently and enthusiastically about his own work, to whomever would listen. I think my own self esteem was so low at that point that I just couldn't stand to hear anyone else toot their own horn.

As our senior art show approached, Greg was increasingly MIA. When he did show up, he would have some hot girl on his arm (Greg got a lot of attention from the ladies, another fact that probably drove me mad with envy), and he would do more talking than painting.

Did I mention that at this time I was recovering from an accident and was suffering from chronic back pain and insomnia? I was taking pretty heavy doses of Vicodin. So, hopefully that background sets the stage for my unforgivable behavior. I was jealous of Greg's confidence, resented what I viewed as his lack of commitment, and I was emotionally unstable thanks to my accident.

What happened was that I destroyed Greg's art. I feel terrible about it. I don't know what came over me, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. I actually thought it was funny, only I was the only one that was laughing.

See, we were supposed to clean our art out of the common spaces in preparation for the senior show. Signs had announced for weeks that any art left behind would be destroyed. Greg, of course, never picked up his art, and when it came time to paint the walls of the studio, I happily ran a roller full of white paint right over three or four nice paintings. Real nice paintings that must have taken a lot of time to create. I remember one self portrait that got it pretty bad.

Once I saw how horrified other people were by my actions, I began to feel embarrassed, then guilty. Then afraid. Greg was actually a pretty big guy, and about 10 years older than me. And he drove a motorcycle. Suddenly, I really regretted ruining his paintings.

When he confronted me, he didn't start a fight with me (a lucky thing, since I was on crutches at the time). But he did raise his voice, and the worst part was that he told me in no uncertain words how much I had hurt him. "I can't believe I actually thought we were friends", he said. "But now I know that you never liked me."

***

Last month, my neighbors were having a party in the backyard. I opened my back door to join them, and who was standing right there in my backyard but Greg himself. I froze. I remembered his last words to me, all of 15 years ago, and I really didn't know what to do.

But I mustered the courage to go talk to Greg, and we had a really nice talk. I tried to apologize for my crime, and he tried to act gracious about the whole thing. Greg is now a successful painter. He has a gallery and has done hundreds of large scale, really awesome paintings. It was great to re-connect with him, but nothing can really take away the stain of what I did. I guess I just have to live with it.

H.

My shockingly messy desk.

What's wrong with me? I live like a swine. As I type this my forearms are touching so I can fit them between the STACKS OF SHIT.

Meanwhile, Stephanie has a nice desk.

Prince Phillip: Class Act!

I came across this list of Prince Phillip quotes on Wikipedia this morning. What a charmer!

* When visiting China in 1986, he told a group of British students, "If you stay here much longer, you'll all be slitty-eyed".

* After accepting a gift from a Kenyan native he replied, "You are a woman, aren't you?"

* "If it has four legs and is not a chair, has wings and is not an aeroplane, or swims and is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it." (1986)

* "British women can't cook." (1966)

* To a British student in Papua New Guinea: "You managed not to get eaten then?"

* Angered local residents in Lockerbie when on a visit to the town in 1993, the Prince said to a man who lived in a road where 11 people had been killed by wreckage from the Pan Am jumbo jet: "People usually say that after a fire it is water damage that is the worst. We are still trying to dry out Windsor Castle."

* On a visit to the new Welsh Assembly in Cardiff, he told a group of deaf children standing next to a Jamaican steel drum band, "Deaf? No wonder you are deaf standing so close to that racket."

* He asked an Indigenous Australian, "Still throwing spears?" (2002)

* Said to a Briton in Budapest, Hungary, "You can't have been here that long – you haven't got a pot belly." (1993)

* To the President of Nigeria, who was dressed in traditional Muslim robes, "You look like you're ready for bed!"

* Seeing a shoddily installed fuse box in a high-tech Edinburgh factory, HRH remarked that it looked "like it was put in by an Indian".

* When a twelve-year-old boy told the Prince that he aspired to be an astronaut, His Highness responded, "You're too fat."

* On the Royal Navy ship HMS Boxer, when given a tour of the ship, which was quite extended, was quoted to have said, "Not another fucking chamber"

* On a visit to Exeter Cathedral, he asked a blind woman with a guide dog, "Do you know they have eating dogs for the anorexic now?"

* Visiting San Francisco in 1983, after meeting then-mayor Dianne Feinstein and several female members of the city council, he remarked, "Aren't there any male officials?... This is a nanny city."

* "They must be out of their minds" - in the Solomon Islands, in 1982, when he was told that the annual population growth was only 5%.

* "How about a root?" - to a senior member of the CWA during an Australian Royal Tour in 1970.

* "That was a bloody Masonic handshake, you sly old wog." - on meeting His Holiness Pope John Paul II at the Vatican in 1988.

* "This place is run by darkies." - during a 1993 royal tour of Africa.

* "Fuck off and bring me a Scotch." - to a waiter at a 1982 conference in Paris.

* "Get me a gun, Rice Eyes, I want to bag one." - to a zoo attendant during a 1989 inspection of an endangered panda exhibit at Beijing Zoo.

* "Well, that's it. I just shit myself." - cutting short his speech opening a car factory in Bristol in 1998.

* "Her Majesty's on the blocks at the moment ... fancy being queen for a night?" - aside to schoolgirl, 10, during a 1994 visit to a Catholic convent school in west Namibia.

* "Well it wouldn't have been through brain injury!" - consoling his son Charles on hearing news of the death of Princess Diana.

* "How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?" - to a driving instructor in Oban, Scotland, during a 1995 walkabout.

* In 1996 he caused an outcry among gun law reformers when he said: "There's no evidence that people who use weapons for sport are any more dangerous than people who use golf clubs or tennis rackets or cricket bats."

* During a Royal visit to China in 1986 he described Peking as "ghastly".

* He said of Canada: "We don't come here for our health. We can think of other ways of enjoying ourselves."

* At the height of the recession in 1981 he said: "Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed."

* Commenting on stress counselling for servicemen in a TV documentary on the 50th Anniversary of D-Day, he said: "It was part of the fortunes of war. We didn't have counsellors rushing around every time somebody let off a gun, asking `are you all right - are you sure you don't have a ghastly problem?'. You just got on with it."

* Personal remarks have annoyed singing stars. In 1969 The Duke said to Tom Jones after the Royal Variety Performance: "What do you gargle with, pebbles?". At a private lunch in the 1970s he said he thought Adam Faith's singing was like bath water going down a plug hole.

* "If a cricketer, for instance, suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, which he could do very easily, I mean, are you going to ban cricket bats?" (in 1996, amid calls to ban firearms after the Dunblane shooting)

* "Bloody silly fool!" (in 1997, referring to a Cambridge University car park attendant who failed to recognise him)

* "Your country is one of the most notorious centres of trading in endangered species in the world." (in 1991, in Thailand, after accepting a conservation award)

* "Oh no, I might catch some ghastly disease." (in 1992 in Australia, when asked to stroke a Koala bear)

This may drive you insane.

Note: this is NOT a Laurie Anderson video. This is a real English instruction show from our good friends of The Nipponese Empire. Banzai!

Igor, the Retarded Russian Orthodox Deacon.

Now, Igor, pay attention. Father wanted me to...IGOR...HEY! Father wanted me to help you with your vestments... you looked like shit at vespers last night.

The diaconal vestments include the sticharion, right? Right? Hey, dummy, over here. (Snaps)Includes the sticharion, the orarion, and the epimanikia, which is worn under, not over, the sticharion.

I said UNDER the sticharion, dumbshit. HEY! YOO-WHOO! DUMBSHIT! Over here. Hello? Are you even listening to me???

Ahhh, shit. Igor! Now you got it all... tangled up.... SHIT. Stand still. Stop...fussing.

Okay...pay attention now...Igor... yes, the icons are pretty.

And comb your beard, fucking HELL. You look like a fucking Rastafarian. Shit.

Now, listen...you're going to take...hold this....HOLD THIS...okay...you're going to take this censer and waft it around....that's it...waft...there you go! Lots of incense. Smells nice. And don't touch the brazier without me or George around, okay? Fire, right? Fire is bad to touch. Hot! See? Hot!

Yes, like the candles. They are hot, too.

Me hanging with Robert: An Interview with a painter

A while ago I had the opportunity to interveiw the painter Robert Hardgrave for my friend Suzanne's art blogazine/online gallery Beholder (Suzanne's mission is to cut through the art world bullshit and bring artists and collectors closer together. Some beautiful stuff there. Check it out.) Robert Hardgrave is a Seattle based artist who paints some very dark, cartoonish (not in a bad way) paintings, kind of in the Giant Robot aesthetic. You can see Robert's work here.

I might be doing more of this sort of thing soon -- interveiwing interesting and/or weird people I know.

Anyhoo, let the Q-and-A begin. I give you, Robert Hardgrave.

Friend-of-Beholder Greg Mills recently caught artist Robert Hardgrave coming off the high of a 24 hour painting marathon. The two had an email conversation about death metal, all night painting orgies and using disease as a muse.

GREG: This 24 hour paint-o-thon sounds interesting. What was it, and did you gradually go insane over the length of the event? Was absinthe served?

ROBERT: The 24hr marathon was a blast. 18 artists from a wide variety of styles participated. We were placed in a building and encouraged to produce as much work as we could in a 24hr period. Under the agreement we were only really required to make 4 pictures. The energy in that building was incredible. Everyone worked so hard and it was very inspiring. In the end I made 8 completed pieces, but have 4 pieces which are almost done which I can now work on at my leisure. They were serving drinks for a while, but I chose not to drink to keep my energy up.

G: Hmmm, probably a good thing. Looking at your work, there's a heavy graphic feel to it, very illustrative. It reminds me of Aubrey Beardsley's Yellow Book illustrations, or some of Jim Woodring's more decadent stuff.

R: I have studied both of their work. Especially Jim Woodring. I corresponded with him a couple of times 10 years ago.He sent me these handwritten letters with little drawings in them. I love how black ink really makes colors pop. Clean lines and high contrast are my vice. I suppose I have a propensity for work with a more graphic feel, and prefer handmade qualities.

G:Other than "art school", can you trace your aesthetic back to any early inspirations... pop culture, high art, or whatever?

R:I never went to art school. I did get a "graphic design" degree in 2000, but the illustration part of the program was completely glossed over. Drawing has for a long time been a great source of comfort. As a kid I was given a Walter Lantz animation lesson book that inspired me quite a bit. I still have that book. The line work in that book was spectacular. Other than that book, art and I were never formally introduced, until I was in my early 20's. I moved to Seattle in 1992 which is when I started to truly explore art. I then absorbed as much as I could, from Peter Bagge's Hate comics, to Byzantine icons, to Dan Seagrave's death metal album covers. I am still a bit insatiable.

G:About Death Metal... on your site bio, you mention you're a death metal aficionado, which is rad. Do you listen to death metal while painting?

R:Indeed. Complex rhythms, riffs, and incessant beats are great for the work flow. I'm probably pretty funny to watch work. I really get into the music while I work.

G:Yeah, I guess Matthew Barney is Death Metal fan, too. I'm not sure how down with it Bjork is. My favorite Metal album cover is Judas Priest's "Screaming For Vengeance", the one with the giant mechanical raptor.

R:That is a great album and that cover is killer.

G: I like how the animals-of-prey-as-mechanical-dealers-of-violent-death theme you might see on a Dio album gets turned on its head to make it somehow cheery, almost Yellow Submariney. But I digress. Next question: your subjects are flat out grotesque. You freely borrow features from a variety of species, move eyes to cheeks, noses to forehead, it's very surreal, very H.P. Lovecraft. It's especially true when the painting is on wood... it starts to feel much more like an artifact of something someone glimpsed, rather than a fiction. Do you think sense of horror ever comes into play in your work? Do you even creep yourself out?

R:Maybe make myself laugh. Mixing things up is enjoyable. Everyone seems to be mixed up anyhow. I just try to make interesting drawings. Most of the work symbolizes experiences, people, or something else personal. It's kind of how I filter life. Which ones do you find horrific?

G:The Cancerland Series creeps me out. I'm guessing it's because this series is your reaction to surviving cancer. Knowing that wmakes it emotional immediate. How much does your experiences with disease inform your work?

R:The Cancerland series were all made during chemotherapy sessions. The last few sessions were at home and the drugs were pumped in over a 4 day period. A backpack, which housed the drugs, ran for four days. There were tubes running from the battery operated pumps to my portocath, a device placed in my chest. All of those drawings are honest depictions of how I felt. It was those drawings that helped me connect to a part of my brain that I don't feel I had tapped into prior. Since then, my work has become more expressive, mostly because of what I learned while being sick. I appreciate life a great deal more, and am doing exactly what I want to be doing, which is making drawings and paintings. Medication and scar references still seep into my work, but I try to pull from current experiences to make work about.

G:You're work is just detailed enough to be lush, without getting claustrophobic. How do you know when to stop?

R:Experience I guess. I limit my palette to just a few colors and I use a lot of repetition with slight differences to keep it interesting.

G:Who are the figures in your paintings?

R:If I told you that, they wouldn't be mysterious any longer. I can tell you that not all of the figures represent people. Does that help?

G: Are they evil?

R:Evil characters are always more interesting don't you think?

G: Are you capturing a moment?

R:Not really a moment, but more how I feel about a situation.

G:Do you have an internal narrative as you're painting?

R: No, but I like to make pictures that feel like there might be a narrative.

G: Thanks Robert. That was very interesting.

R: My pleasure. Thank you

Can ye spare us the cutter, me brother? (Do me a favor, yo.)

If you're a regular visitor, I'd love to know where you live. So would you please post your city and country in the comments section? You can be anonymous if you want.


Ginkers! That'd be swell!

Your pal

Greg

Canada: Peaceable Dominion

Lovely people, my neighbors. Polite, yet darkly absurd. Friendly, welcoming, with beer approaching the American product in sheer urine-tastic flavor. I love 'em. Know only one asshole Canadian, and I even like him.

How do they do it? RITUALIZED VIOLENCE and WARFARE. Lacrosse, a Canadian aboriginal invention was known in its original form as "Little Brother of War" (at least according to the Young Person's Encyclopedia of Sports that my Mom bought in the neverending struggle to forestall my latent homosexuality) was used to settle territorial disputes in lieu of full on slaughter.

The haolie palefaces that in turned birthed the Dominion (after sending all the Indians to be adopted by pinch-faced Methodist spinsters who could only sublimated their gargantuan libidos by snapping the wee-wees of young redmen in the Books of Common Prayer) must have picked up on the good sense of that, since they evolved hockey to the swollen testicle Ragnorak from the prissy game of charades that a bunch of nancy boys from McGill University put together to wile away their 19th century faggot Winter Sundays.

So, respect hockey. It's only a thin blue penalty line that keeps Canada from reclaiming their Viking mantle and killing everybody. Oh, and fuck the World Cup.

The latent violence of Canadian Ice Goons is palpable here:

Fat Men! I’ve Had it Up to My Fat Thighs With Us!

Fat Men! But Holy Shit, just who do we think we are, wedging our selves in at the buffet to drink gravy and break wind out of our fat rolls. Sad! Wretched! Satanic! We lay in our custom built tiled room, full of fridges and floor drains, and the Eastern Europeans we smuggled in pour GALLONS of high protein frothy poo frappe down the blobby, mottled pink Sand Worm holes we had carved by Mexican plastic surgeons. So we can eat more of that goddamn nougat we lust over. We are fat fucks. And I am sorry about that.

And being married to us is no fucking bit of leprechaun spunk, is it gals? No! Manning the bucking nougat ducts to launch more empty calories into us is thirsty work but we drank all the yogurt shakes already, leaving you with tap water. You’re the ones that rub the unguents into our chafed hips, scoop out the lint from between our folds with teaspoons and alternate between holding the bucket and mopping our the sweat off the fat pad that hangs over our eyes while we pass yet another a stone . And you clap like a nursery school teacher when the hard gristle ploinks on the bottom of the bucket and we grunt like beasts.

"More fucking NOUGAT. Please?"

Fat men are for shit. I’m sorry.

You know what I hate about we fat men the most? Our big fat thumbs. And our clammy ass cheeks, clammy from our ass vein being clotted up with more of fatty fat.

And all we do is leave greasy star-fish shaped stains all over everything while we paw for more goddamn nougat. The divan. The Marcello Spundeno leather sofa. Track the star-fishes and you’ll find us tits down in a hypoglycemic coma in a puddle of spittle, piss and nougat, kitchen door ripped off its hinges and the cupboards asunder like a bear raped them.

So, sorry. I hate we. I totally understand if you do to.

Worst Case Scenario

Two Mexican migrant workers, both men, get married in a Muslim ceremony. During the ceremony, a freak fire breaks out, and one of the grooms grab an American flag on display in the hall and beats out the flames.

One has glaucoma, so his tux ass pocket is filled with medical weed. The other works in a factory that produces fake display food for Japanese restaurants. He has a large rubber gherkin in his pocket. (In a previous job, he served as a guide taking people on tours of the glaciers of Kilimanjaro.) In going over the song list with the wedding DJ over the phone, one of the men keeps mentioning the song “La Bamba”. It’s a bad connection, so the DJ asks the man to repeat the title of the song. “BOMB-a. La BOMB-a”. The DJ agrees, then suggests the Dixie Chicks. The groom responds enthusiastically, not noticing an ominous clicking on his phone.

In preparation for their honeymoon to France, one of the grooms head to the Public Library. Remembering his soul mates love of seafood, he ask the library for an anchovy cookbook. The librarian mishears him, and gives him the Anarchist Cookbook.

Then, on the way home, he adopts a child and buys some fertilizer. Lots of fertilizer. He wants to open a lawn care business in Louisiana. In the meantime, he and his spouse to be have bought a beautiful little house on a quarter acre lot, one that stands on a plot of land that a city council member got a call about from an lawyer for Wal-Mart. The lawyer had some interesting ideas on how the city might pick up some extra tax revenue for that particular plot of land, and did the city council member next any campaign cash, or a maybe a trip to Scotland to play some golf?

Greeks, Danes and English types: some new links

Sporting some new links, hope you'll enjoy.

The Christopher Bate Propaganda is advertures of shiftless English screenwriter-to-be who has better weekends than I do.

Froth on the Daydream details the tribulations of Chloe, Greek Goddess of food journalism. She takes gorgeous pictures, drives her son to birthday parties, and seems to eat dinner with attractive women a lot.

Kimananda's House of Fortune answers the question: do the San Francisco Giants have any fans in Denmark? Uh, yes. Yes they do.

Stephanie's Song of the Day only tangetially has anything to do with songs, per se. She's getting fit. We should encourage her.

Sucky Blog is not. Ha! Ironical!

The Assimilated Negro can call himself that. Profilic! Lots! Funny! Full of thinkings and stuff!

Disappointment has been around since 1997 , pointlessly. The blog itself is a wonder of offensiveness and venality. So it's good.

Dave Hill is full of the forced zanies, but once you get past that, it's very funny. Check out the Black Metal Dialogues.

I work with a man who has an enormous fleshy ass.

Let qualify that; I work with a man who, while wearing pants, appears to have an enormous fleshy ass. And I’m certainly no Adonis, but this man’s ass is so incredibly big that talking about it simply couldn’t be considered cruel. It’d be like scanning across the sweep of the Swiss Alps and being circumspect about the Matterhorn. His ass is empirically, fantastically large and blubbery.

I have not seen this man’s bare ass. Although, given the opportunity I would, because it appear so very fleshy and enormous. To miss an opportunity to seeing his two massive buttocks nude would be like turning down an audience with the Pope.

It even jiggles a little bit. It’s like he’s smuggling two pot roasts on top of a normal sized masculine ass. Is there cellulite? If he flexes his buttocks, do they dimple like two halves of a golf ball? I’d approach him, but I need my job. Maybe if it were my last day, I’d approach him with a crisp hundred dollar bill and ask. Purely non-sexual. I just really want to see his enormous fleshy ass in action.

He wears dungerees and khakis, which he fills out in the seat like twenty pounds of wet corn meal. He’s sort of pitched forward and walks with a slight waddle. Understandably, perhaps. I’ve never spoken with him, but he joshes and slaps backs with the other fellas like a baseball coach.
His upper body seems to be normal, if a little chunky and foreshortened, like it’s being swallowed by his ass.

Yet his legs seem to be both fat and long. Their length may be an illusion, as his fleshy ass is so enormous that it forces him to wear his pants extremely high on his doughy haunches. I’m pretty sure their fatness is not an illusion. Pretty much a wysiwyg type of thing going down. They look like fucking gelatinous tree trunks because that is what they are. Two gelatinous tree trunks holding up twenty-odd pounds of wet cornmeal.
Now, I couldn’t say his ass is feminine. The female buttock form is weighted more towards the bottom and I say amen to that. The feminine badonkadonk is one of life’s great pleasures. No, this is a leather necked, he-man MASCULINE form of Steatopygia. While a little bit hippy, he doesn’t have an hour glass form. He just has a enormous, fleshy ass.

And I'm fascinated by it.

Have a nice day.

The Lad

Here he is riding the toy steam train in Tilden Park, looking like Neil Armstrong atop of Apollo, pulling 12 Gs. In truth, we were consistently outpaced by a dragon fly.

He complained later that it smelt like a barbeque.

Pointless gripes and rants are healthy

My blog pal Jack has posted a mostly pointless forum on minor annoyances. It can be found here. Sign up for a free account and bitch, moan and bellyaches like the goddamn baby you are. Yay complaining!

Speaking of complaining, today my employer sent the entire department on a forced march to the local bowling alley, where we had to have "fun". Free hot dogs and beer. So that made it mildly less depressing.

Bowling.

The horror. The horror.