I had been getting kind of cynical over the last few years: “Ohhh,” I said, “I’m not sure our institutions and leaders can really influence what goes on in the world – It’s all proceeding according to the vague, impersonal rules of economics, technological development, and international dick-wagging.” As despicable as he was, at least Bush showed us that what modern leaders do actually matters. And now – I dunno if I can say it, I’m too excited – we’ve got the Coolest. President. Ever. He makes Bill Clinton look like Steve Urkel:
Get it? (It’s because he has big ears.)
Speaking of ears (not really!), before I moved out of Madison, I painted a mural on local comedian Chris Waelti’s wall (that’s him in the photo). It was an interesting exercise since I hadn’t ever done anything that big before, and the layout of the room was such that I couldn’t get far away from the painting to see the whole composition. In this photo you can see the left half of it, but the only way to get the whole thing would be stitching some photos together, spy movie style:
I was given license to just go nuts on it, so it ended up being pretty surreal and filled with monsters and little characters in every nook and cranny – Yes, I do like Heironymus Bosch. Actually, ever since I was a little kid, I would fill up pictures with tons of tiny, cavorting characters like that (Lemmings vs. Robots was the recurring theme). It’s something I’d like to get back into, but it’s definitely a time commitment to do it right. Even if it’s just Lemmings vs. Robots.
I tend to be on the side of the little guy against big business, but this kind of stuff really irritates me:
“The paper is getting much attention. A spokesman for the American Dietetic Association, a group well known for its close ties to food companies, emphasizes that food is not tobacco. Of course it’s not. But food companies often behave like tobacco companies, and not always in the public interest. The Milbank paper provides plenty of documentation to back up the similarity.”
I had typed out a few paragraphs on corporate responsibility and the difference between a shoddy product that spontaneously causes harm and a “vice” that everyone knows causes harm when not consumed in moderation, but you’ve heard it all before, and I realized that my reaction was just emotional to begin with: This is lame. This is 10-o’clock-curfew, abstinence-pledge, stand-up-and-say-three-things-about-yourself, “non-traditional”-baby-shower lame. I don’t know what it is about this kind of smarminess that’s so distasteful – Maybe it’s the subtle suggestion that you can’t handle your own affairs. Now, I am not one of those Ayn Rand-reading balls of congealed resentment who thinks anyone who doesn’t want to own all the money in the world (or isn’t a programmer or an engineer or something) deserves to get run over with their own Prius, but there’s something in this kind of thinking that makes me bristle. It’s like it’s trying to turn you into a yuppie. This is yuppie-thinking. Not even the good kind of yuppie.
Going to be doing some program covers for the Billings Outlaws football team, here’s a quick conceptual sketch of the coach as the archetypal “chessmaster”:
Here’s an ode to the Russian Soyuz-type spacecraft, still putting around in orbit after 40 years. Keep on cruisin’, little guy:
Started a new book proposal for something I’m tentatively calling “Fate Circuit,” a remake of a time travel story I did when I was in Japan. Here’s a page from the original version, circa 2004:
Pretty literal stuff, as you can see. Here’s page one of the new version (sans speech balloons or being done):
A lot funkier and more experimental this time; I really want to play with what I can do with the watercolor and oil styles I’m trying to mesh, here. It still needs a lot more work, but when the drawing part is finished, I think I’m going to have all the text coming out of that cylinder thing’s fingers.
Speaking of cylinders, I also decided to whip up an O’Neill Colony the other day for a little change of pace and to exercise my nascent 3D modeling skills:
Still needs a little work… Well, now I’ve got something to do while eating dinner.
Added some links to the main page, if you look over on the right, there. No, that’s too far. Back a lit- Yeah, right there.
Someone online was describing a nightmare he had when he was little, where Superman was waiting in the bushes to attack him. I thought it was such a goofy idea I had to sketch it:
The Simpsons used to be so awesome:
I think it can be a problem when anything gets too polished: Notice the strange lavender sky and Homer’s weird motions and angle during his soliloquy – I think it makes the whole thing a lot funnier and more “intimate,” contrasted with how the animators have figured out a way to do everything consistently now, taking the surprise out of it. Maybe it’s just nostalgia, but when the show was dealing with the ’80s and early ’90s it seemed so much “realer,” whereas now they make self-conscious references to things like cell phones and Facebook in a bid for relevance. Any comedy that isn’t completely absurdist needs to engage with the society that created it somehow, granted, but by deliberately drawing attention to the “furniture,” I think it actually diminishes its ability to comment on and point out all the silly things we take for granted. …Or you could just say “Show, don’t tell.” Whatever works for you.
Been doing some more drawing lately, to fill this site out a little as its propeller begins to spin and it takes to the sky on its untested wings of HTML and Javascript. That last sentence betrayed an embarrassing lack of knowledge of both web design and aeronautical engineering, but hopefully this will distract you while I escape:
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