Sunday, August 31, 2014

Box Office Numbers

Big day at The Year of Magical Painting.  Six hundred or so people stopped by.

I find numbers like that astounding.  Humbling.  No, not humbling.  But gratifying.  Imagine six hundred people just stopping by to extract from TYOMP whatever it is they hope to extract, the way a bee visits a flower, or a vampire visits an excruciatingly hot young woman whose initial gasps of terror soon give way to something deeper, darker, primordial -- the sounds naughty girls make, in the darkness, on the edge of town.

Is that too much?
Maybe a little.
But the Springsteen was strong.
Yes it was.

I'm thinking it's my new alphabetical paintings.


The Scream

In a world with this much angst, Edvard Munch is always with us ...

This is a mixed-media work ...

... my portrait of Maria Sharapova at the US Open.  Enough with the screaming, Maria.

I usually root for Maria, especially against Serena Williams -- one of my least favorite athletes in the entire world.  I mean it -- I can't stand the woman.  Which sucks, since Williams has habitually eaten my girl Maria's lunch for most of their careers.  But I feel bad for Caroline Wozniacki, what with that whole Rory McIlroy business.  He's bounced back nicely, and it would be fun for her to win a Slam event as well.  So there's a part of me that would like to see The Woz win the match and roll straight through.

Upon reflection, however, a larger part of me wants to see Sharapova advance, then mop up the court with Williams.

Fat chance.
A man can dream.

Enough with the screaming.

Leda and the Swan, Volume 3

Twombly's take ...

Dude!  Getting busy with that swan!

After this, no more.  I promise.

Leda and the Swan, Volume 2


Just so you don't think I'm crazy with this whole swan business, I nabbed this comprehensive collection of LATS images from a post on a blog called Where Is Ariadne?, which is a hoot.  I would urge you to check it out.

The only image of significance that's missing is Cy Twombly's.  Maybe I'll post it later.

Amongst the below, it's hard to pick a favorite, perhaps Gericault.  Adam Miller's, near the end, certainly takes home the deeply-creepy award.  If I'm feeling dreamy, I like the Comerre.

Michelangelo (1510)
.


.


Jacopo Pontorno (1512)
.


Correggio (1532)
.


Vincent Sellaer (1538)
.


.


Paolo Veronese (ca. 1570)
.


Peter Paul Rubens (after Michelangelo, 1600)
.


Francois Boucher (1741)
.


Theodore Gericault (ca. 1820)
.


.


Paul Cézanne (1882)
.


Leon Comerre (1908)
.


Giovanni Boldini (undated)
.


Odilon Redon (undated)
.


Nicholai Kalmakoff (1917)
.


Otto Dix (1919)
.


Paul Matthias Padua (1939)
.


.


Salvador Dali (1949)
.


Francisco Ramos (undated)
.


Sergey Marshennikov
.


Gabriel Grun
.


Sara Renae Jones
.


Adam Miller (2008)
.


Neil Moore (2009)
.
'Seduced by Zeus in the guise of a Swan'

Totems and such

This is the best one ...

It reminds me a bit of the totem poles that Native Americans make in the Pacific Northwest; the Tlingit, the Chinook, the Nuu-Chah-Nulth plus dozens of other tribes.

I like to lump them together and call them Redskins because I'm told by the National Football League that that is an honorary term acknowledging the people's bravery, integrity and some other positive stuff.  Here's a Seahawks helmet ...

I also like it because it reminds me the least of cheap Miro/Picasso knock-offs.

In some ways this version is an improvement, but I've decided that I'm not crazy about that horizontal top line ...

I look at the simplicity of the one at the top and I think I like it better.  I do, however, like the way New and Brooklyn have been improved in this version.  I also like the placement of the translation, although the blue Brooklyn looks stupid and perhaps that whole business needs to be rethought.

Onward.

Elegy to the Spanish Republic #110

Now we are just completely fucking around ...


I may need more coffee.

Did I mention that after several telephone calls to The Mothership, my New York Times finally started arriving?  How hard is it to deliver a fucking newspaper?   When I opened the door and I could feel the paper-person's resentment simmering, rising out of that little blue bag the way heat rises from a manhole cover in late August in New York.

Here's to happier Times.  If you're with me.

Leda and the Swan

I would describe myself as falling nicely into the had-enough-coffee-to-last-me-a-couple-of-days category.  So I turn now to Leda and the Swan.

[long pause as I paint the thing]

Okay.  Here it is ...

Nice.  Disregard the little white bits on each side.

And here's a Robert Motherwell painting -- a famous one, titled "Elegy to the Spanish Republic #110" -- just so you can get a sense of why everybody wants to paint like Robert Motherwell ...

It's not about actually looking like a Motherwell, since that's certainly not in the cards.  But it's the whole Abstract Expressionist idea of really just whaling away with the paint on a big canvas that I'm finding attractive.  And I say this with the full understanding that Leda and the Swan is a tiny, finicky thing and nobody was whaling away at anything.  It should also be noted that I may be wandering away from my original goal of painting with linguistic characters, which is a problem because I like the way the Motherwell kind of reads from left to right ... and that's one of the things we're shooting for.  But I'm not going backwards, just to change stuff.  I'm moving forward.

Also, just so we're clear, Leda was the wife of Tyndareus, the King of Sparta.  Zeus was hot for Leda.  He appeared on earth in the shape of a swan and seduced/raped (sources differ) Leda on the same day that she had had sex with her husband.  Four children emerged:  Castor, Pollox, Clytemnestra and Helen.  Helen and Pollox were said to be the children of Zeus.

Clytemnestra later married Agamemnon.  Helen became later known, rather famously, as Helen of Troy.  Because I like to keep things local.



Saturday, August 30, 2014

Okay, Now It's Time for Bed

Exhibit A, revised.  Unlike the first two, this could actually be a painting ...

And now it's time for bed.  Although I know I'm going to just lie there thinking about all this.  The alternative will be to do a third painting, and then, before you know it, you're up all night.

Everybody Wants to Paint like Robert Motherwell slash These Are Terrible But One Must Always Remember That In Situations Like This There Is No Such Thing As A Bad Idea

Part of the reason you people pay the money you do to read the blog is for the occasional glimpse behind the curtain.   Poking, if you will, around my frontal cortex with one of those microscopic cameras, trying to figure out why things are the way they are.

Which brings me to this:  By now everybody knows that I can't get enough of the Asian Galleries at the Met.  Fine.  And do you know what pisses me off about the Asians?  They've got their own languages, which they write all over their paintings, but which I cannot begin to understand.

So I thought I'd make my own language.  And paint that.  Hopefully in the manner of Robert Motherwell, at least as regards the vastness of the thing, although it looks a lot more like my boy Joan Miro.

Exhibits A and B rendered electronically ...



The only thing that should be understood at this point is that significant words, like Troy, New, Brooklyn and Home and Heart are rendered as major characters.  Smaller words like is, the and is, where, the, and is are rendered as doodles.

It should be noted that these are basically gestural paintings, and attempting to do them with a computer mouse, as opposed to a paint brush, is cray-cray, to paraphrase Daughter #2.

I, it should also be noted, have only begun to fight.

Quick story:  You've probably heard it before, but whenever Jackson Pollock would throw stuff down that, by accident, resembled something, or anything, he would obsessively block it out, paint over it, etc., until absolute abstraction was achieved.  The same problem plagues me here.  For example the white dot in the word Troy looks like an eye, making the character look like an animal of some sort.

This is bad.

Also problematic, at this point, is the idea that a given word -- Brooklyn in the top one -- is rendered in a different color than the other characters.  In a perfect world, the word in the title typed in English would be the same color.  Which, for some reason, it isn't.  But should be.

Are you with me?

Revisiting This Whole Lev Grossman Business, Volume 4

Also The Tempest and A Midsummer Night's Dream.  And perhaps Much Ado About Nothing, although I'm thinking no.

Revisiting This Whole Lev Grossman Business, Volume 3

Also Alice in Wonderland and at least five Wizard of Oz books.  The count grows.

They say the key to fantasy is the ability to make fantastical things become totally believable elements of a crafted world.  I mentioned in the first of this line of posts something called the Dark Material books.  These are more correctly called the "His Dark Materials" Trilogy by Phillip Pullman.  They, honestly are great.

The best part?  I can promise you it wasn't the movie, which was so bad they shelved plans for filming Books 2 and 3.  The best part was the armored bear.  Every society experiences war, and every war has a range of weaponry.  The dreadnought -- the doomsday weapon, if you will -- of the His Dark Materials world, was a sentient, armor-plated bear.

Here's a picture as Frank Frazetta might have drawn it ...

Imagine that thing coming at you.

I am enjoying The Magicians a great deal.  More than I thought I would, given that this is supposed to be the weakest book of the trilogy.

Leviathan Update

Just, as Jane Austin would suggest, it's axiomatic that rich single guys want or need (that part's a bit fuzzy) to get married, likewise, if you have to choose just one, is it better to have a good defense than a good offense.  Pat Riley once famously told his Lakers late in a game: "No rebounds.  No ring."  After which we can only assume they went out and got a shitload of rebounds.  Keith Wilkes -- I loved that guy.

So Virginia loses to #7 UCLA by eight.  28-20 -- more or less what I predicted.  But three of the four UCLA touchdowns were returns of fumbles (1) and interceptions (2), all in the first half.  We held them to seven points after the break.  Take those turnovers away, which you obviously can't, and we crushed the motherfuckers.

Me?  I'm strangely sanguine.  Like I've been smoking opium or something.  Which is only a guess, since I've never smoked opium.  Not even sure how.  Something to do with tongs and a hot coal.  Again, I'm guessing.  Nonetheless I do have warm feelings coursing through my body, a sense of gentle, benign disengagement and, in the back of my mind where you'd assume I'd be listening to White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane, all I can hear is a voice saying "Bring on Florida State."

In summary:  We baited our hook for Leviathan.  We then hooked him.  He then, due to a couple of unfortunate miscalculations by the helmsman, ate our boat.  We were picked up two days later, no worse for the wear.

Go Hoos.

Baiting my Hook for Leviathan

Did you know Thomas Jefferson couldn't stand Edgar Allen Poe.  Hated him!

All of which is beside the point because today, at noon, as surely you know already, my foster mother, the University, of Virginia, as if that last bit even needed saying, will meet the storied UCLA Trojans on the field of honor.  Ilium fuit, Troja est, as we like to say here in the Collar City.

Televised on ESPN no less.  Let freedom ring!

I called a friend of mine who told me the Cavaliers were 21 point underdogs.  This seemed hard to believe, given that the event is taking place in Charlottesville.  Update:  it now seems a little easier to believe since I see that UCLA is ranked 7th in the country.

Nonetheless, I choose not to accept a 21 point spread.  Prediction:  Virginia 17/UCLA 24

If you find yourself on the grounds of the University, of Virginia, as if that last bit even needed saying, you can find Edgar Allen Poe's room on the West Range.  Here -- this may help:  The West Range is the line of small buildings farthest to the left ...

[Warning: this map is somewhat out of date]

Number 13, if memory serves.  Looks like this ...

I bet that grinds away in Jefferson's craw, even in the afterlife.  And while I'm not comfortable with the obviousness of the raven sitting in the window, it does bring us to the next matter of business ...
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
    While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visiter,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
            Only this and nothing more.”


    Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
    Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
    From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
            Nameless here for evermore.


    And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
    So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
    “’Tis some visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door—
Some late visiter entreating entrance at my chamber door;—
            This it is and nothing more.”


    Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
    But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
    And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door;—
            Darkness there and nothing more.


    Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
    But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
    And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”—
            Merely this and nothing more.


    Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
    “Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;
      Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—
            ’Tis the wind and nothing more!”


    Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
    Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
    But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—
            Perched, and sat, and nothing more.


Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
            Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”


    Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;
    For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
    Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door—
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
            With such name as “Nevermore.”


    But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
    Nothing farther then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered—
    Till I scarcely more than muttered “Other friends have flown before—
On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.”
            Then the bird said “Nevermore.”


    Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store
    Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
    Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
            Of ‘Never—nevermore’.”


    But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
    Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
    Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
            Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”


    This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;
    This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
    On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er,
But whose velvet-violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er,
            She shall press, ah, nevermore!


    Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
    “Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee
    Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore;
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”
            Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”


    “Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
    Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—
    On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—
Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!”
            Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”


    “Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—
    Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
    It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
            Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”


    “Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
    Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
    Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
            Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”


    And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
    And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
    And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
            Shall be lifted—nevermore!

Sorry about that.  Pretty strong, but I didn't remember it being as long as Desolation Row, or as depressing.  And all that white background was a bit jarring.  But, as anybody knows who spends time on these pages, this is what we do.  Et hoc est quod facimus, if you will.

Twenty-one points!  Thank God we're not playing the Ravens.

Friday, August 29, 2014

Oculus Rift, or I See You've Got Your Brand New Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat

What a great fucking name for anything, including the spat between Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton.  The first, not the second.  Which is just a line from a song.

In any case, this gif tells the whole story ...


When they start feeding console-grade video games through this baby it will be the last time you hear from me.  Period.  Full Stop.  I'll post a video of the boys singing Sweet Virginia and will be gone.

Old folks caveat:  There was a moment near the end of Wolfenstein: The New Order that surprised me with such violence (the event wasn't violent, it was the shock of the event that was violent) that I almost fell out of my seat.  This raises concerns about something happening screen left or screen right and old folks snapping their scrawny little old-person's necks while turning their heads to see what's going on.

Maybe there's an exercise.

Explaining the joke in 'Go Hoos'

There are a lot of jokes, I suppose.  Things designed to make you, dear reader, smile.  But the main joke isn't really a joke, and I don't know why I need to explain it, other than to avoid people thinking I'm having a relationship with someone named Johanna.

To the point:  The third paragraph of the recent 'Go Hoos' post begins "Much like the night's inclination to play tricks when you're trying to be so quiet, ain't it just like the Journal to not allow me to cut and paste their graphic?"

The penultimate sentence, and the one before it, read, in reverse order:  "Perhaps I'll bring an annotated painting of the Dean of the African Studies department.  Or my friend, Johanna."

The lyrics of Visions of Johanna, which is a great song, go like this:

Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re tryin' to be so quiet?
We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our best to deny it
And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin’ you to defy it
Lights flicker from the opposite loft
In this room the heat pipes just cough
The country music station plays soft
But there’s nothing, really nothing to turn off
Just Louise and her lover so entwined
And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind
In the empty lot where the ladies play blindman’s bluff with the key chain
And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the “D” train
We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight
Ask himself if it’s him or them that’s really insane
Louise, she’s all right, she’s just near
She’s delicate and seems like the mirror
But she just makes it all too concise and too clear
That Johanna’s not here
The ghost of ’lectricity howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place
Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously
And when bringing her name up
He speaks of a farewell kiss to me
He’s sure got a lotta gall to be so useless and all
Muttering small talk at the wall while I’m in the hall
How can I explain?
Oh, it’s so hard to get on
And these visions of Johanna, they kept me up past the dawn
Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while
But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles
See the primitive wallflower freeze
When the jelly-faced women all sneeze
Hear the one with the mustache say, “Jeeze
I can’t find my knees”
Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule
But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel
The peddler now speaks to the countess who’s pretending to care for him
Sayin’, “Name me someone that’s not a parasite and I’ll go out and say a prayer for him”
But like Louise always says
“Ya can’t look at much, can ya man?”
As she, herself, prepares for him
And Madonna, she still has not showed
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
The fiddler, he now steps to the road
He writes ev’rything’s been returned which was owed
On the back of the fish truck that loads
While my conscience explodes
The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain
And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain
     -- Bob Dylan

I'm just saying.

Why do you feel the need to explain all the jokes?
I don't.  But some I do.
The part I don't get is the bit about the African Studies department.
That's a bummer.
Why?
Because that's one of the jokes I don't feel like explaining.

The Mind Reels

Check this out ...
Wow.  Is $24 too much to spend on drawers?  The full story here.

Drawers.  What does that even mean?
It's another word for underwear.
Why not just say underwear?
It makes me uncomfortable.
Really?  I bet once you get your zones cooled by mesh, whatever that means, you'll be more comfortable.
That, my friend, is the general thinking.

Revisiting this whole Lev Grossman business, Volume 2

Also The Once and Future King.

Thursday, August 28, 2014

Go Hoos

This is said sarcastically.

I don't understand why an outstanding university in an outstanding conference can't get its act together and rise above consistent mediocrity on the grid iron.  I refer, of course, to my foster mother, the University of Virginia, and it's place on the Wall Street Journal's Grid of Shame.

Much like the night's inclination to play tricks when you're trying to be so quiet, ain't it just like the Journal to not allow me to cut and paste their graphic?  I had to photograph it on my computer screen (thus the moire), then gussy it up, then post it as a jpg.  I'm all about productivity and so, presumably, should the Journal be.  So c'mon, man.  Loosen up.  You're slowing me down.

Anyway, there are the Cavaliers, more or less dead-center on the weakling/powerhouse scale and just slightly above average on the admirable/embarrassing scale.  The logo, if you're not in the loop, is a white V with crossed sabers.

Obviously, one wants to be as close to the upper right corner as possible.  And, as I cast my eyes that way, Lord Have Mercy there's VPI (which I always thought was a technical school and don't really know what it's doing on this particular grid).  That hurts.  I don't mind them having a better football team than us -- I mean, after decades of the status quo a man gets used to it -- but I resist the notion that their program is more "admirable" than ours.  As if that wasn't enough, Duke is right next to VPI.  Duke!  Three years ago they wouldn't have known a football from a kielbasa.

Above Virginia on the admirable scale, about half way to the top, is Syracuse.  The very mention of which, if you live in this part of the world, gets pretty old pretty fast if you're not an alumnus.  So that's annoying too.

The only consolation, I suppose, is the University of North Carolina parked all by itself as highly embarrassing but a bit of a powerhouse.  My plan is to go to Charlottesville in a couple of months and inspect their team up close and personal.  For your benefit, dear reader, and my own.  Perhaps I'll bring an annotated painting of the Dean of the African Studies department.  Or my friend, Johanna.

Go Hoos.

Revisiting This Whole Lev Grossman Business

It has been called to my attention that in the original Lev Grossman post I started the second paragraph by saying "I don't read much fantasy."  I then proceeded to list a dozen or so books.  And I'm sure there are other books in the genre that I've read but didn't list.  For example, I read a good bit of C.S. Lewis back in the day (the serious stuff, not Narnia.  although I read some of that too).   Oh, and some of those Gor books, although they were pretty stupid.  And John Something of Mars, or something like that -- they made it into a terrible movie starring my boy Taylor Kitsch.  Likewise Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf, which is, dude, like The Mothership of fantasy.

That said, we're talking about the fullness of a man's life.  Three score and soon to be one.  So fifteen or twenty books out of hundreds?  I stand by my statement.


Mid-Term Break

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying--
He had always taken funerals in his stride--
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble,'
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year. 


    -- Seamus Heaney

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Nazis Au Revoir

For Father's Day, my children game me Wolfenstein: The New Order, a video game that involves the shooting of mechanized Nazis and their fucking mechanized dogs with the sort of weapons Arnold Schwarzenegger would have wished he had in Terminator.  I finished it last night.

Outstanding.

And, as is sometimes the case when the last part of the game is extremely difficult and then, suddenly, over, you sit there and kind of stare at the screen while the credits roll.  The song they played was a super-emo cover of Chris Isaak's I Believe by a woman I've never heard of.  I listened to the whole thing.

Melissa Hollick.  Here's her website.



Manoman, that last Nazi took it out of me.

This whole George R. R. Martin business

A couple of posts ago I was pretty hard on George.  I suppose it should be said that what he has achieved with his Game of Throne books and the HBO series they spawned is nothing short of marvelous.  So when I'm bitching about the insufficiency of books 3 and 4, I don't lose sight of how extraordinary the man's overall achievement is.

Thank you, George.  You and your fucking hat.


Overhead

Overhead, overhead, overhead.  It's like real estate, but I'm talking about shaving.  I'm thinking about switching from one of these ...

 To this ...

An Edwin Jagger DE89bl chrome-plated, double-edged safety razor.  Nice.  Like shaving with an Aston Martin.

Plus there's this:  Buy a Gillette Mach 3 handle for about ten bucks (already spent, since I own several of them).  Buy a 12 pack of cartridges for about $30.  Buy the Edwin Jagger (which I'd immediately rename Mick) for $31 on The Big River.  Pack of 100 blades?   Go ahead and guess.

[pause]

Wrong.  Nine bucks and change.  For a hundred of the little bastards!  Let's assume I shave 100 times a year.  For my 40 bucks I could shave with a new blade every time I shaved.

OVERHEAD!

Worth noting:  the Mach 3 is a great razor.  I wonder how much of my face I'm going to shave off with my Edwin Jagger and it's so-called safety blade.

Also worth noting:  I'm an arts and crafts guy, and sometimes you just wish you had a razor blade to cut something.  So that's an added bonus.

Famous line from that famous Volkswagon repair manual from the 60's.  Went something like:  "Buy the nicest set of wrenches you can afford because they'll last forever and some days, when things are going badly, you can just roll them around in your hands and admire them."

Let's also be frank.  It annoys me how much replacement blades for the Mach 3 cost.  It's not like it's the end of the world, but you know they're just screwing you and that's the part that annoys me.  So I tend to stretch my blades out, which causes a less than optimal shaving experience.