A blog about stuff that I never get around to blogging about.
Monday, January 28, 2008
One of my favorite publishing houses
I subscribe to a lot of RSS feeds 'cause I like information overload--makes me feel like I'm getting stuff done when I'm really just wasting time. A lot of those feeds get marked as read even when I haven't read them 'cause time isn't infinite. One feed I always read, though, is the news updates from Picturebox. Damn, these guys just put out one great art/comic/headfuckery publication after another. A latter day Fantagraphics (another fave publishing house) will have to do a Popeye on all this stuff and reissue it as classic American visual culture. But you can get this stuff right now. Highly recommended.
First piece of advice, based on a dream last night:
Don't go to Iraq. It's fucked up there, with the US Army reduced to fighting insurgents house to house with slingshots. If you do go, don't take your four-year old son. If you do take your four -year old son, make sure he's with you, otherwise you'll find out that something vaguely dire has happened to him--this is also the moment you discover he's along for the trip, incidentally. If your son is harmed in some way, discourage your wife from leaping onto a steam train to rush to his side if she is without a ticket, because otherwise she will be accosted by surly Iraqi women for not riding legitimately and you, her husband, will be forced to run alongside the train, beseeching your suddenly materialized guide and interpreter to help you with the oddly shaped coins in strange denominations (39?!) that you must now throw through the open window of the train compartment to your wife to pay for her ticket and arrest the onslaught of irate Iraqi widows.
Second piece of advice:
Go read Mo on Miranda July. I find much of what she says sage, although I personally am not that keen on the bite your tongue school of thought. Then again, Mo gets in fewer dustups than I, so she's perhaps onto something.
Emmett has lately been saying that he doesn't like doing art--he's too self-conscious about it and too self-critical, which is heartbreaking to watch in a 4 and half year old.
But yesterday he treated me to this. It's a machine, which he often but not always pronounces as "bachine", for making blueberry and cranberry muffins. The little thing off to the side is the remote control used to turn it on. It combines his two passions, construction equipment and kitchen assistance into one item. Right now it is my single favorite piece of art in our house.
Maybe not much posting today. Will mostly be getting the yard and house ready for hosting the Austin Improv Collective's annual banquet and awards ceremony.
We may also go check out some stuff with the East Austin Studio Tours. This year there are even a couple of locations in Windsor Park, our neighborhood.
Also, after talking about Miles Davis yesterday, I got to thinking about this band, and how they exist in the microclimate opened up by experiments like On the Corner. Again, not for everybody, and hardly riveting from aspect of performance, but still a thing exerting the shape of itself.
Not much posting yesterday, as you you can obviously tell by looking at the blog. Lacey and I got a ton of work done on our backyard, however, in anticipation of our hosting the AIC awards banquet this coming Sunday.
This is going to seem like a weird thing to talk about, but discussions today on the Austin Improv forums reminded me that this post of mine accounted for the single highest blog traffic day for me, by a factor of four or so. It is also a post about which no one at any time ever said a single word to me, even though I have proof that quite a few people read it. Oh well. I should also say I stand by my central assertion, that one need not like what you like, nor is it proof that one has a chip on one's shoulder against what you like. It merely means that one has other interests. Nor should one feel ashamed of stating those priorities or having opinions. One need not be part of the informed cognoscenti to hold those opinions, and one isn't disqualified from haviing opinions for lacking the correct pedigree and credentials.
But enough of that, because I want to turn both me and my argument around and talk about sanctimony. I'm all for getting polemic in public ways. We're artists, and while people in the arts often have tender egos, their often terrific verbal sparrers and polemicists. That's all fine and good. I love having things I believe and trying to articulate them.
Buuuuuuutttt......
I hate when that position-taking element creeps into the art itself. Lacey and I have been watching a ton of Weeds lately, which overall is pretty good. My single biggest complaint about the series, of which we've watched almost the first two seasons, is the revival and reinsertion in the culture of this song by Malvina Reynolds. Take a listen:
In season one, this version played before every episode. Seriously, it's catchy as hell and worms its way into your brain. In season two, it's reinterpreted by different artists, so now there are 12 more versions of it floating around out there.
Here's my beef with the song. I don't necessarily disagree with the sentiments expressed in the song. Heck, overall I'd say I probably agree with them. My problem, then, is that the song agrees too much with itself. There's no doubt in the assertions put forward in the song, a dreadful air of superiority, which renders it propaganda. This is why satire is killingly hard, because it's hard to make art that doesn't end up just coming across as preaching.
I have the same beef with Lemony Snickett's little holiday trifle from McSweeney's, The Latke That Couldn't Stop Screaming, which showed up at my house recently becuase I got a McSweeney's Books subscription. The sentiment of the book I agree with (all religious cultures in America should be afforded their place in the sun rather than being shoehorned into the Corpotate XMAS mono culture)--it's the haughty tone I can't stand. It made me think to myself "Go screw yourself, silly overpriced hipster children's holiday book--I'm a goy who knows what a latke is so get over yourself."
Which I guess is not that far from my reacting to sentiments and discussions outside works of art which dictate to me what sentiments are "acceptable." I don't mind agreeing with you, I just mind being told I have to.
On Friday, Emmett and I hung up our vinyl shade from Miranda July, the first thing from our subscription to, well, The Thing Quarterly. I have to say, 30 bucks per art work over the course of the year is a great deal.
It was great seeing Owen last night and loaning him a copy of her book and talking about how we both have art crushes on her.
It was good seeing friends today and last night, and it looks like we have some other parent/party things coming up on the horizon.
