. . . Settling back into the Appalachian-American pace of things.

Saturday night I all but fell asleep in front of the TV watching season 2 of Mr. Show. I had been fighting to stay awake for the better part of a whole episode. This Will to Remain Awake vrs. The Need For Rest placed me deep inside a nearly-dreaming and super suggestive state of perception. When I turned off the DVD player and "real tv" popped on I just couldn't fucking believe what I was seeing.

*(At this point I must discuss the curse I'm under, still, after several years, cast on me from the shear girth of exposure to live music. Playing show after show, practice after practice, opening bands, house music, all of it . . . every last stinking note, has turned me into a real hard target for the spell that music employs. Like baking for a baker, building cabinets for a carpenter, writing poems for a novelist, it's not so much an unappreciation as much as an inability to seperate craft from fiction. Too involved in the process. It takes a completely exceptional circumstance to goad me into that place where music stops being a bunch of folks with instruments and tuners and chords and equiptment for their equiptment, and families back home and places to sleep that are not their own, and love on hold, and pets that miss them and a full bookshelf far far away. . . etc. Past all that, there is another way that music settles in the brain as a message beyond our comprehension, communication beyond communication. The form of it hypnotizes and soothes and pulls you outside of your body and into some collective balance with everything around you. Vibrations and waves form alternate time. Tone has mass. "Visual" takes place inside as opposed to out and hearing rules the world of sight.
Anyway, I've got quite a tolerance for the stuff. It takes a great artist to get me there (**cough, cough**Rasputina**cough**. . .) and it's a mixed-kinda-blessing-thing 'cause when it hits it hits hard and I think I maybe appreciate it a little bit more).

. . . So, yeah, late night. . . half-asleep, "real" tv pops on. . . .
and what I see is a fucking bedlaam of energy taking over a crowd of people. At first I assume it's the latest war-induced hysteria. People are in complete disarray and shaking and jumping at each other, NOT MOSHING!! And not moshers, real people. Old people, young, black, white, rich, poor. . . nothing ties this group together visually. Then a stage. A man seated (but not sitting) in front of a lap-guitar and then I realise there's music! He's sideways now, kicking his legs high in the air like a chorus girl. Then he's up!!! Skipping frantically across the stage, feet a blur. The bass player looks uncomfortably like Dave Chappelle with a six-string bass, but he's singing/screaming in a Geddy Lee-esque whistle of a voice. The drummer is unseated next to his set, then he's down again, then he's up!! Buddy on the lap-guitar is now ripping shit up!!

And everybody is dancing like they're on cocaine. Everybody!!!!

Turns out it's a guy named Robert Randolf and this is his Family Band. Credentials?:

Guy's played with:
Fountains of Wayne
The Blind Boys of Alabama
Sawyer Brown
Ringo Starr
The Dirty Dozen Brass Band

Appered on tributes to Jimi Hendrix and boasts two tunes on an Ozzy Tribute.

this year, aquired tour slots with both Santana and Dave Matthews.

I just don't know? Not really my type of thing, but the live shit was so much the real deal. Check out their tune "I don't know what you came to do". It just blew me out of the fucking water's water.

He's for real. In a years time, everybody will know who he is.

and,
Caught the movie Chuck & Buck. Written by, and starring Mike White, producer of everybodies favorite show, Freaks and Geeks (oddly enough it also stars Chris Weitz who wrote Antz AND the nutty professor II). Shoulda' starred crispen Glover. Check it out.

Official Unneglection of Blog

Got back from Chicago on Friday. Now I'm home. Pictures to come as soon as Missy gets back from New York with the camera.

Aside from the usual going-home-to -see-where-I-grew-up stuff, I'm mostly excited as all hell about a preview I saw on TV (don't get much tv here, just public access. . . which is fine, but not very present as you could imagine).

I love Terry Gilliam!!!!! My collection of video taped movies is packed with his work: Jabberwocky, Time Bandits,the Fisher King,12 Monkeys, Fear and Loathing (ok, it's not a very big collection). Everything else is an attempt to get that "Gilliam Feel" (The Wall, Bring out the Dead, City of Lost Children, Labyrinth, the Dark Crystal, Fantastic Planet, Goonies. . . add them all up and it's like a Terry Gilliam flick). I mean, for Fuck's Sake. . . the dude cut his teeth doing all the animations for Monty Python (and by-fucking-hand he did those with a Super 8 and a gigantic bag of weed!).

Despite problems trying to finance the super-stupid budget it takes to produce a work of the likes that his exceptional imagination conceives (see the movie Lost in LaMancha for more of that particular cinematic injustice), he's just about to grace our collective minds with another piece of Gilliamana. I don't know if you've caught the preview yet (Here . . . catch!), but I'm just chewing the ass out of my pants with anticipation. This will be my first brand-spanking-new DVD purchase (and you know what a cheap bastard I am!).

Speaking of being a Cheap Bastard:

Our household has turned it's buying power towards the high-tek in the last couple of months. We've been good-boy-sit consumers in an attempt to maintain technological comfort in this desolate location.

The product propigation started slow. Christmas brought me my first cell phone. Considering I lived in Toronto without this most basic of modern necessities, I figured I could hold-out another decade, but it was not to be. More recently, a 250 Gig Lacie External Hard Drive appeared and acted the role of courier between Melissa's Scho-oloffice Mac and our Home PC (P. C. = Please Consider, as in "Please consider this thing was made to be a cash register").

Now, that was over a span of 8 months. In the last 15 days, our environment has seen the addition of a Sony Digital Camera and an iPod (for the sake of our finacial credibility, I'm pretending this infux of white and silver machinery is due to extra funds loosened up by the $8000 grant Melissa received for her next show).

iPod! uuhhmmmmhhmmhhmm!

Even now, from the next room, I can hear the entire Faith No More catalog filling it's little white belly with almost-bungly-power-pop-for-retro-perverts-and-bad-cop-wanna-be's (hyphen king . . . thank you).

*(Decides the break from posting warrants an extra long rant, although normally, I would stop here and kid myself into thinking I'd plan on remembering this particular shpeal for a later post {that was omnious for-shadowing to the real point here(hear)}. Got the seatbelt on your thinking cap tightened for this installment of usually-kept-in-the-brain-cause-it-would-require-to-much-concentration-brain-candy?).

The iPod has altered my conception of music in two days. I can't help but project myself into the near future and try to anaylze my music listening habits. Until now, the hobby/past-time/therapuetic/recreational application of music into my sound holes has required some sort of commitment. In the very least regards to the idea, the selection of a CD was necessary for any sort of listening experience.

This unfolded as thus:

it starts with the act of physically approaching my disorganised collection of discs, being forced to acknowledge it as such, thus accepting my lack of motivation to catagorize multiple aspects of my life (even ones as essential as my love for this waved-bringer of sonic substance). Step 2 was the immediate justification of this non-decision with an observanve of the uninstinctual randomness that is enabled through a non-organised system, which appears to reward an individual by inhibiting the opportunity to make an unrestricted choice and forcing unchosen, but accessible, items to seem appropriate in order to validate this mode of hap-hazard storage. The particular not-quite-perfect selection is then sweeted through the listening as an homage to the gods of choas. A humbling penance to the supremacy of Chance's appeal in comparison to my own predictable predilection towards the limits of my own preference.

But now, this has all changed, and with it, I'm changing too. For the first time in almost a decade, I'm going to go make myself breakfast as opposed to waiting to eat until my stomach is growling. Something about this new control of musical input has allowed me to hasten the din in my head that speaks of missed opportunities and temporal restrictions in regards to how much time neccessary tasks consume. By switching the interface of one aspect of my life, all others follow suit in some respect.

Maybe after breakfast I'll alphabetize my books?

Media

In with the good, out with the, uh . . . better?

Considering all I do is go to work and work on my art at home, I need a lot of media input to lube the grey matter into it's creative mode. It's like exercise or feeding a plant.

I've never really been into the auto bio-graphical sort of work. I figure the locks they put on diaries are small and flimsy for a reason. I hate when people write about their art and use dreams as a reference too. Seems to simple to just say, "it's dream material". Everything is, really. So I'm almost uncomfortable relating the flow of my art's meaning to dream logic, but I must. It's nothing more than the daily processing of everything that is not me into something that fits semi-neatly into the sets of symbols and word-logic that we fucked-up animals claim as reality, or at least a representation of sense. . . anyway:

here's what I've been into.

The Jacket

Peter Struass, I believe, had his name all over Six Feet Under, and on this movie as well. Some weird deal where George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh recruit unknown movie-makers, even on the fringe of independent films, and give them access to the big names and the big studio and see what they can do. This one stars Adrian Brody and Kris Kristofferson and Keira Knightly. It's like Naked Lunch meets Six Feet Under combined with some Jacobs Ladder and a bit of 12 Monkeys.

It also had the trailer for the new Philip K. Dick movie A Scanner Darkly on it which looks fucking unreal. They painted every cells of the film so it looks like a thriller/sci-fi/action movie in the style of Waking Life. Check it out:

Yummy Cartoony Dick

Fury, a Novel by Salmon Rushdie
The dude can fucking write. It's so bizarre to hear the impression of New York in 2001 from a non-western genius. He descirbes everything objectively and it's almost a game of figuring out what he's talking about: A play about friendly Lions and so on. Plus it's about being angry amidst a massive population of people and how we deal with that. If all you've ever heard of was The Satanic Verses you should check this guy out. Some of his books are the best fairy tales I've ever read.

Finally got some tickets to see these fools live!!!!!

In Cleveland, September 25th, general admission on the floor. . . i've been waiting a long time for this. Not to mention a chance to see The Mars Volta again!

and also,
I almost spit up dinner watching Dead Like Me season 2, when the episode about the old man's huge balls came on. . . .

Takin' Care of Business . . .

. . . on this here site.

Mostly because I'm leaving this weekend for Chicago. Already feeling guilty for all the posting I won't do while I'm away.

Worked on Missy's ceramic project today. If you don't know, she's making hundreds of giant-sized sewing and corsage pins for a couple shows that are planned for later in the year. There will be drawings that accompany them. The drawings are huge! The pins have cast ceramic heads and today I sharpened their aluminum shafts on a big grinding wheel while she sanded down some pieces for firing. The corsage pins are five and a half feet tall. The sewing pins are a bit smaller.

Her next project (get this crazy bitch!) is going to be chainmail garments made out of engagement rings!! She's casting and setting the rings herself in Kansas later this year. The shows are booked and the work isn't finished yet, so she's kinda stressed, with her classes starting soon and all. I'm trying to remember where the shows are, maybe Chicago and Colorado?

I've been busy hanging out in the basement studio trying to further catalog all my work on digital film.



These are mono-prints, mostly around 22x30 (that's the size of the paper if you're wondering why all the work falls under those dimensions. . . I hate ripping paper down!). The pictures are rough, kinda blurry and the color isn't right yet, but it's definately getting better.

Enjoy!

Mileage out of failure

. . . not the band!!

I got some pretty nice shots off some of the unfinished paintings that are scattered around my upstairs drawing parlor (yeah, I said "parlor").



This bitch is getting pierced in the stomach with a syringe with george washington's head. She's floating, floating, . . . . floating.



DOG BOYS!!!!



You know . . . transparent domes set into groins with heads coming out of them. . .

AND:

Clownboy,
Hope you stomach the waiting well. Only a couple more weeks now. . .

Datura,
How 'bout some pictures of the fruit of all this busy time? Way to keep busy!

L.C.G.,
Your waiting's just begun. . . all the bad stuff in life is a challenge, not punishment. Wish you the best in keeping your head over this weird interim-time.

-M

011101010011Digitalo0101101011010

Got a digital camera this week, finally.

I've been busying myself with the task of documenting a bunch of my old work. This involves a pretty intensive set-up of clamp-lights, ladders, chairs, brackets, folded-tabs-of-paper, bulbs, cross-faded-sweeps and other unmentionable bullshit. I don't have it down quite perfect yet, but it's getting close.

For your viewing pleasure

Funny story about those drawings:

The first time I came to my current town, Athens, was for a print conference. This was back in '98. I wasn't sleeping much then and was sharing a hotel room with Mike, Amy (my undergraduate-grad-assistants) and a pre-relationship Melissa (who I'd be living and loving with 8 months later, much to both our surprise). One of my sleepless nights was spent in the parking lot of the hotel with a portfolio of about 12 of these huge drawings of indian-style-old-men-in-suits and a bag of clear, individually wrapped, hard candies that where bought for the long road trip to Ohio from Normal, Illinois.

Sick of all the arty pretense in the air, I managed the rip through most of the drawings. Each piece was about an inch square and weighed-down to the parking lot by a candy. Each candy grabbed light from the lot's overheads and cast down a colored shadow onto the drawing scraps. It was beautiful and it was only for me. I completed an area about the size of a blanket when the lady from the lobby informed me, in not so many words, to stop acting like a fucking lunatic 'cause I was scaring the other guests.

The ones here are what I had left (the heads where done later).

anyway,

-m

Just a coupla' ordinary guys. . .

Who likes clowns?!?!?!?


Clownboy


me

I'm off to work. Got a digital camera yesterday. You can expect to see wildly exciting Athens Ohio in all it's splendor soon enough.

YES!

Hey blog-pals,

You'll both enjoy this:
insert big smile here.

. . .

I'm a Fuckin' Geenyus

Yeah, it's true.

I started the X-ray work because the tedious, tiny drawing's slowness was driving me crazy. So what do I do to cure this slothy pace? I start scratching the most insanely detailed drawing I can muster up into a darkened film with a small pointed object.

How's that for thinking?

After two hours:


Compare that to the drawing below (it's the upper left corner) and you can imagine the lightening speed in which I'm gonna bust this one out. I'll have to switch back to the drawing for some relief.

I guess my thirty-second year is turning out to be about pacing.

The relative, perceptive experience of time in comparison to memories of time's passing.

I blame this all on the heat,
-MATTam BUTTerfly

Word-Bubble/Hand-Apendage/Up-Side-Down-City/Digital-Livestock

This sketch will be engraved into an X-Ray (16x14) along the upper edge . . . maybe almost getting cut-off. It floats above empty red word bubbles coming out of a cluster of bald, tangle-armed torso men. They don't know any better.

Yeah, I'm still working on the big dumb drawing too, but I really need to mix it up a bit. That particlular thing is gonns take a while to finish.

. . . and I really like scratching into x-ray photo paper with nails and needles and other pointy things that get hard to hold on to.

long-lost lonesome cowgirl

jen jen
Originally uploaded by stupidtool.

I was excited to see the Lonesome Cowgirl in my blog comments. We've gained and lost contact more than any other friend I've ever had. Maybe two years ago we met in Chicago for some face time (probably longer than that, but humor me), but had since lost touch, what with me leaving the country and being kinda on the lamb (for all practical purposes)

Glad to have my college bud back. Who else would've ate mushrooms with me, jumped on the bed and danced to White Zombie? My ex-fiance was rather jealous of our friendship and did not approve, but that's only because she wasn't as much fun(I think she ended up in North Carolina training police dogs!!).
Looks like she's moving to the Bay area soon. Goddammit!!! Everyone I know is moving West. How long can I stay away?
Anyway, welcome back to the Pazzol-Rama. I look forward to seeing you soon.