last week's jams:

email:
sanskrit at gmail dot com

Atom RSS feed

blogosphere:
NEW LINKS COMIN' SOON

Best Week Ever
Gizmodo
Brooklyn Vegan
You Ain't No Picasso
Music (For Robots)
videos.antville.org

hug for maria. congrats on the portfolio. and big ups to big lazy.

today i fixed my old watch, now it looks all bandaged and hardcore...i like it.
i also made a prototype of my biomed passport, which is pretty sweet, and i memorized a monologue from sports night for class tommorrow.
i chose to do dan's monologue (i think its from the pilot, i'm not sure) where he apologizes for a statement in a magazine where he says he hasn't done drugs in eleven years.
very good monologue. i hope i do it well. its been a few years since i've done a monologue and i'm worried about my voice.

here's hoping this week goes well so i can spend next week earning scholarships, designing webpages, eating, sleeping, and recording songs.

oh yeah, i beat race 112 last night. i officially beat the game. underground mode is locked for me but i'm number one on all the rankings and i can mod out any car i want with anything i want for regular old races just for fun.
i tricked out a golf gti just to see how a volkswagen differs from my miata. the accellerations a bit low even after all the mods, but the fact that its a physically smaller car definitely helps when trying to not crash into walls.

the ignorant pedestrians on MacJams.com pretty much hate our Super Mario 2 song, questioning whether it counts as a song and claiming that i need to seperate the vocals on two tracks and use filters.

i claim that they all have terrible taste in music to be cranking out the crap they do.

whatever, i post my songs there anyway just for the hell of it. my pop song still hasn't gotten any comments, but its rated a 6 whereas mario is rated a 2.

i'm feeling pretty good today.


yesterday i finally deposited my paychecks. they won't be processed until monday, but still its a load off of my mind. on the way back, brian and i stopped at the used cd store closing around the corner to check out their 1 dollar cds. i picked up the urge's master of styles because i've had "jump right in" stuck in my head lately, and i got wyclef jean's the carnival because i've had "gunpowder" stuck in my head lately.
i gave some good critique in graphic design yesterday (i say that because my teacher, who always enjoys my critiques, was taken aback and impressed by alot of my statements)
in fact, i was stopped twice during my critique of jamie's book for using what they called twenty dollar words, though i think they are fourth grade words at best.
jamie's object was a manual can opener. his cover was this metallic paper with ridges and dents in it, which was good, and it was clasped with a black ribbon held in place by two magnets on each side, one glued to each cover board, and one magnetically attracted to each of those holding the ribbon in place. i pointed out how i wished that one of the sets of magnets was reversed so when the book was spread out in a circle the magnets would not stick together, forcing the ribbon to come loose when pulled apart. of course, when i said this, i said "reverse the polarity" which stopped the class in their tracks.
i also pointed out how his pages were ragged and disorderly when folded, which complimented the uneven cuts on the lid of a can. the two ways to judge that would be a) its a project and a book and its terrible or b) it compliments his icon and its wonderful. i said i fell into the latter camp, and that combination of words stopped them again.
i did offer some good compositional critiques, but those two examples just stopped everybody, so i thought them worthy of note.

here are two photos of my finished book:



here's the final page spread. i'd post the image here except the final page layout is 56 inches long, so its a bit wider than the blog ever should be. just click the link and see it seperately.

today i've been doing a little work on the post-apocalyptic ID tag for my type class. i also watched Comic Book: the Movie this morning, and i beat eight more races in Need For Speed: Underground on PS2, including race 103, the one brian's been stuck on for a couple of weeks (i beat it in one day, WHOO!) and the dreadful race 111, which theoretically is the final race of the game except that i am now at race 112, so its not. i didn't feel like pushing it, so i turned the PS2 off and came in here.

and i did that new song with brian. check it out on my PureVolume page.
since its with brian, the mp3 is tagged for Between Names and now (sans)krit, which is just me solo. until we put up a seperate page for Between Names, its on my page.

oh, damn! another saturday! another hit song!
Super Mario Bros. 2
brian and i collaborated on this one. i did the high vocals and the mixing, he did the low vocals and the percussion. that makes it the first official track from Between Names.
too bad max is home right now, or he could've been part of music history.

hahahahaha

if this were in america and not britain, THIS would totally make me want to drive all the time.


additionally, i want very much to read THIS book, but it saddens me when even CNN can't write properly:

"Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times, sent an e-mail message to staffers this week about the book, saying the newspaper does not intend to respond to Blair or his memoir, the newspaper said."

eww...that's just a bad sentence.

all the scientists are running around looking for the monkey but he can't be found 'cause he's down by the pond playing hockey with the kids
and all the mothers are running around looking for the children but they can't be found 'cause they're down by the pond playing hockey with the monkey
and its 1, 2, 3, the kids love the monkey
and 4, 5, 6, the monkey's got a hockey stick
7, 8, 9, having a good time, yeah

national guard is running around looking for the monkey but he can't be found 'cause he's down by the pond playing hockey with the kids
and all the teachers are running around looking for the children but they can't be found 'cause they're down by the pond playing hockey with the monkey
and its 1, 2, 3, the kids love the monkey
and 4, 5, 6, the monkey's got a hockey stick
7, 8, 9, having a good time, yeah

its 1, 2, 3, the kids love the monkey
and 4, 5, 6, the monkey's got a hockey stick
7, 8, 9, having a good time

yeah.

James Kochalka Superstar; "hockey monkey" from the album Monkey vs. Robot

the books are coming along well. hard parts waiting for the glue to dry before i can do anything else.
i've finally finished the layouts and i'm really quite happy with it. i just need to wait until classes are over so i can print them in the lab.

we got out new assignment in type today. we're the second class to do this (she just came up with it last spring and we all remember scoping out the results in the display cases) and its very cool.
the year is 2036 after a whole lot of disease outbreak and similar post-apocalyptic movie stuff. it is our job to design the biomedical passports people need to wear at all times in order to enter any store, office, cross state lines, anything. its got info like your vacinations, how prone you are to mutation, et cetera.
the final product is due in a week.
so this is really cool graphic design on a really tight schedule.

i like this game.

that is some goddamn terrible news. one of my favorite shows still on television will soon no longer be on television. adult swim barely showed it that much this year, opting instead for four-day-a-week sheduling of family guy and futurama, which, while i love both shows, were rarely as intelligent as home movies and i'm pretty sure they didn't have as many episodes as homemovies does now (halfway through its fourth season, i'm pretty sure family guy and futurama only had three each, though family guy season four is supposedly in the works)
by the end of this season, homemovies will have had 52 episodes. at the rate cartoon netwrok is playing them right now, it would take a whole year to show the entire run.

cartoon netwrok has, however, ordered a new season of totally spies, among the worst cartoons in recent history i've been subjected to.
looks like home movies is being replaced by the venture brothers, which seemed like a pretty lousy cartoon when they aired the first special back in december.
additionally, cartoon network will add Mucha Lucha to its stable, one of the crappiest cartoons to disgrace kids' WB
toonami is basically becoming a toned-down version of the old adult swim action on saturday nights and the old toonami is being replaced by the new Mugazi which will have american japanese rip-offs like totally spies and teen titans.


cartoon network sucks.

a picture of one of some people at the advance screening of the passion of christ yesterday night.

is it just me or is that a priest sleeping through it? and those people don't seem to be particularly interested in what they're watching.

i have no intention of even thinking about being in a movie theater until march 19th when Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind comes out.
charlie kaufman writes, michel gondry directs, jim carrey, kate winslet, kirsten dunst and elijah wood star. there is no way that movie cannot be brilliant.

i was so bored-to-migraine in math today that i actually popped my headphones in and listened to his name is alive's "stars on E.S.P." (an album i still haven't grown tired of after listening to for almost a week, which is damn impressive this semester) while i rapidly solved the problems and drew tiny compositions on yellow post-it notes.
american creativity was better this morning that usual. we looked over pop art (warhol and lichtenstein), folk music (joan baez and bob dylan), civil rights (birmingham), JFK's assassination, and beatle-mania.
and while i must admit that its nice and refreshing to listen to, watch, and discuss the acomplishments of the beatles in class, i can't get over that nagging voice in my head that screams "THIS IS NOT AMERICAN CREATIVITY!!!"

i'm a good bit stressed over my book for kendra's class, considering i had neither the means to cut the davey board for the cover nor the proper glue to affix the cover top the board until yesterday. no matter, though, as kendra didn't approve our cover designs until yesterday.
problem there is that while she liked my cover design using a bunch of icon experiments that were not used in the final page layouts, she preferred the slipcase design i had come up with as extra material and thought that the two together would be too much of the same icon, and since my icon is scotch tape, i should have the cover simply be tissue paper.
not an entirely bad idea.
problem there is that the glue we all went out of our way to get because it was right bleeds right through tissue paper and causes it to wrinkle.
i'm gonna do a couple layers of the paper to make sure it doesn't rip in your hand while you hold it. the glue takes a little while to dry, though, and i still haven't had the time to get to the labs and print the actual pages.

hopefully she'll accept one finished book on friday and i can make my own copies over the weekend.

sometimes i really miss new york. i will be back sooner than i know. we are approaching mid-term.

Oscar-nominated actor Ken Watanabe has joined the cast of director Christopher Nolan's highly anticipated film about the origins of the Batman legend. The announcement was made today by Jeff Robinov, President of Production, Warner Bros. Pictures.

Watanabe, who is nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his performance in 'The Last Samurai,' will play the villainous Ra's Al Ghul, alongside stars Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne/Batman; Michael Caine as his trusted butler Alfred; Katie Holmes as a childhood friend of Wayne's; Liam Neeson as Wayne's mentor, Henri Ducard; and Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox, a former board member and sidelined employee of Wayne Enterprises.

Directed by Christopher Nolan from a screenplay by David Goyer, the film is produced by Emma Thomas, Charles Roven and Larry Franco. The executive producers are Ben Melniker and Michael Uslan.

The project is scheduled to start production in London in March.

The film, which explores the origins of the Batman legend and the Dark Knight's emergence as a force for good in Gotham, will be released worldwide in 2005 by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

You're A Prayer for Owen Meany!

by John Irving

Despite humble and perhaps literally small beginnings, you inspire
faith in almost everyone you know. You are an agent of higher powers, and you manifest
this fact in mysterious and loud ways. A sense of destiny pervades your every waking
moment, and you prepare with great detail for destiny fulfilled. When you speak, IT
SOUNDS LIKE THIS!


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

i just took a 35-minute stroll uphill on an open sunny highway back to my apartment.

in theater class, our instructor, paul hutchinson, reviewed the eight homework exercises from the past month we were to perform in class today (that's the way it works, half the stuff you do in class you've mostly forgotten was ever homework)
when i requested that we not do the "almost-silent scene" because it had been assigned three weeks ago, it was uninteresting and nobody liked it, almost everyone nodded in agreement. paul said i could either do it or not do it and take the F. when i said "ok" he got confused. he asked what i meant and i said "i'll take the F."
he was flabbergasted. how could a student WANT to take the F?
i argued that we've already done twenty on-stage exercises and one failure surely wouldn't affect me that badly. a couple of students agreed with me on that point.
paul decided not to drop the issue and discuss it with me in front of the class for a few more minutes, at the end of which i answered him that i would like to not do the scene, and he replied that he would like me to drop the course.

now, it being over a month too late to drop any courses, that was not an option. but if i stayed in class after a statement like that, it would be insubordination, which was one of the few things i ACTUALLY got in trouble for in high school.
so i walked out. calmly without making any sort of facial expression other than "alright...i'm cool with that" i packed my bag and walked out. i heard all the other students whispering back and forth to ask if i was joking or serious and i heard paul make some noise as if to acknowledge that he didn't know.

everyone in that room knew i didn't have a ride back to campus. jesse and i bug them every week for rides back because we don't have any other way to get back other than the 35-minute walk uphill in the blazing florida sun.
i'm not worried about jesse getting back because he has his cell phone and always calls people to pick him up. if i were his ride i'd feel bad and probably reconsider.
fact is, i spend more time every week searching out transport for that class then i do studying for, doing homework for, and walking to and from both of my other liberal arts classes combined.

being the devoted student i am, so set on paying attention in class and having no distractions, i didn't bring any money or even my discman, so the entire walk back i was wishing for music or a cold soda, anything to stop dictating an open letter to paul hutchinson in my mind. that reminded me of the last time i wrote an open letter. for those new to the game or just not caring enough to remember the trivialities, it was written to LIAC in response to accusations of sexual harassment at a UU convention. i wrote a long meandering essay recounting the events of the weekend and exposing the girl in question for the liar she was and how the whole ordeal, being my first UU convention, was having a negative impact on my view of UU politics, which was bad since i at the time served on our congregation's board of directors and had previously served on a couple of YRUU committees.
regardless, they liked her story better, which blatantly negated the stories of myself and three other people at the weekend convention, and i was banned from UU conventions for life.
about two months later the new youth advisor completely rewrote the service i had been preparing for over a month while i was having my portfolio reviewd at carnegie-mellon, the only weekend i did not attend any UU congregation since the start of the school year. between the reactions from LIAC and the assanine alterations to my service, i left SNUUC and have refused to donate a single dime to any Long Island congregation of my own volition.

but the thing is, everyone who read my letter, whether they had been at the convention or not, whether they were unitarians or not, there was not a shadow of doubt in their minds that i had done nothing wrong. i irrefutably documented every conversation and activity i was involved in all weekend, every song i listened to, ever room i entered and exited, but authority figures look for easy resolutions rather than just ones, and that pissed me off.

and it pisses me off today.


i am not writing that letter. at least, not yet. but i am not to take this sort of abuse.

i make an effort to edit myself as i write in my blog as i know who reads it, but make no mistake that i mean this and i am sorry for it:


fuck you, paul hutchinson.

i had a dream where i walked into a record store and there were posters everywhere for a new album teaming kim deal (of the pixes and the breeders) with kylie minogue

it was weird.


as we critiqued in class today, i pointed out my favorite piece which happened to work hierarchically from bottom to top. i commented that "reading top to bottom is so 20th century"
no one reacted. it made me sad.

mp3s affect you.

pregressively as of late, iTunes has felt like playing Dar Williams more and more often, especially "end of the summer" which makes me feel all cold and sad and lonely. i find i must fast-forward past any of her songs. she's hauntingly good and depressing me.

oddly though, as dar has been on the upswing, so has my morning jacket. i find myself temporarily unable to remove either "i will be there when you die" or "if all else fails" from my mind. they are terribly beautiful songs. i wish i had written i will be there when you die. that song is truly magnificent.

had a really weird dream last night. i don't remember most of it, but i remember being weirded out and i remember the statement "i don't want to be stillman, i want to be dave."

i think i was trapped in lost at sea.


max, brian and i took a brief excursion out to old navy and michael's yesterday. brian bought sleep pants at old navy and i, being unable to exit an old navy without something, bought a nice tan ringer t-shirt, a blue suede sweater, and a new notebook as i love their seasonal notebooks.
we went to michael's because max needed gesso and i needed supplies for my book. of the davey board, pda glue and tissue paper i needed, i got tissue paper. i still need to find some davey board and pda glue, and very very soon.

its that crappy time of year when the orange trees are in bloom, so all those orange spores are in the air and i am allergic. so for about a month i am miserable and this month always starts just before spring break.
that in mind, i should email lawrence and ask him to send any info he'd like me to circulate at mega-con, i.e. upcoming events, confirmed guests for the art fest and what info i'm allowed to share about that, any new flyers or business cards for the new location, is there a new phone number there, et cetera.

my prototype for the upcoming redesign of my ringling art page has received the brian stuckey seal of approval. luckily, i think i can keep the redesigned illustration page involved after a few minor tweaks.
with my current plan, the photo page will be down for a while. i'm hoping to get my photos to work a little bit more like jacob's photo interface with full albums in one small pop-up, and that will take a whole lot of designing, as well as scanning a whole lot more photos.

we all know american politics are about connections, who you count as your friends.
well, now you can check out presidential candidates John Edwards, John Kerry, and George W. Bush on friendster (links take you directly to the candidates friendster profile pages after you've logged in)

i'm pretty sure that George W. profile is a joke, but i'm not sure.

Matt Good has a new song on his web page (and a good one, this time)

check it.

sad, but true. spread the word.

i can't believe you've never listened to cibo matto before. viva la woman was named by rolling stone as one of the ten best hip-hop albums of all time, or something like that.
the gimic is that every song on that album is about food.
still, i happen to enjoy stereo type a much more than viva la woman. i have both.
and there are two oriental women singing in cibo matto. if you watch the michel gondry dvd, their video for sugar water is on there.
i'm not entirely sure, but i think that's the song they played when they were featured on buffy the vampire slayer.
that episode just bugged me. i think it was season 2, maybe season 1, but i think it was 2. all day in school xander was going on and on "cibo matto is going to be at the bronze tonight!" this was the first in a long line of WB primetime dramas to feature a popular band as themselves for seemingly no reason. my favorite was the episode of charmed where dishwalla played at the club and their manager sold the band to satan in exchange for record sales or something. my most hated was the episode of buffy where bif naked played a frat party for no reason whatsoever. its like, here's buffy and riley, here's bif naked jumping and singing, here's willow and oz, here's a close-up on the bass drum with the bif naked logo, ok, let's go back outside and be angsty while we fight demons and not ever discuss bif naked ever.

but yeah, the cibo matto appearance was odd but good. they played the bronze, a slow dance song so i'm almost positive it was sugar water, buffy danced with xander and he got all hot and bothered and then she humilated him or something and killed some vampires and cibo matto played music like a good band.


today is mal's birthday. good for him.

of those songs, i think i feel bachelorette the most. although i might reccomend Play Dead over that. even if my fave björk song is the anchor song. i love that song so.

for thosw aiting for updates to my webpage, here's a little sample of the rock art i'm cooking up


yeah...i know...weak...but when this book is done for graphic design, there's going to be a plethora of scotch tape pictures up there.
i just really dug what i'd done to the blog last month and i wanted something similar to this.
and yes, i did horribly rip of Mal for the actual layout there. what can i say, it was simple and nice. i liked it.

suggestions welcome. help me make a better webpage.

oh man, am i great at this...

i only need two more pics for the layout to be 16 pages. all else fails, i can cut it down to 14, but the ones i've got look great.
i'm really happy with the third of my four covers.
i made a mock-up slip cover (it slips over a cd jewel case, not a book. i figure the cd jewel case is roughly the shape of the book i'll end up making, so this is better than doing it to any of the novels or books of essays i have here) and it looks great and works perfectly. uber-cres, that is.
i'm happy with this.

props for the day go to steve, who IMed me once while i was away today reccomending that i check out Mates of State. on a whim and his advice, i looked them up, read the bio and downloaded a few songs, and i really freaking love this music. Suhail was amused when i IMed him (already being a MoS fan) stating that they sound like a "significantly happier rilo kiley"
the entire band is just one married couple. the wife plays organ, the husband plays drums, they both sing, and its wonderful.
makes me want to go into garageband and go nuts for a few hours, but i really should sleep alot.

incidentally, right now, it is 50ºF in sarasota, florida, and 34ºF in long beach, new york
i have the weather for both displayed in the upper left-hand corner of my desktop at all times now.

so much graphic design work really snuck up on me when i started on it this morning.
for kendra's class tommorrow i need to have at least three cover designs for the final book and a revised graphic matrix of the ideas connected to the tape dispenser. i spent a good bit of time laying out and gathering images for the matrix, but i'm getting sick of that, so i'm doing a bit of work on the revised layout of the actual book.
this is now my fifth layout for the book's pages, and i have to say, i'm really excited about this one. the past four i was just sort of putting the pictures together in some way that seemed interesting and fulfilling but not really caring too much except to get it done. now i'm deleting stuff, doing complete do-overs of previous compositions and coming up with patterns for the page orders and now at some point, when i put the camoflague tape dispenser in the jungle near a waterfall next to the giant cropped tape dispenser arm, i got UNBEARABLY excited looking at the page layouts.
everything flows. its effing miraculous.
there's an immediate formal relation from panel to panel and the pages go 1 b&w, 1 color, 2 b&w, 2 color, repeat. i knew it was genius when i put my ninja tape dispenser next to the spiraling tape dispenser pattern and the shapes lined up on the edges of the pages. beautiful!!!

my plan right now is for a 16 page book and right now i have a four panel gap between number 11 and 16.
this should be good, but i need to work on this ALOT.

don't expect a song this weekend. i have to work on this book, hard style.

very cool. i'd love to see him there.

maybe its because its almost two and i still haven't eaten much, but i have no ideas for that sequential strip. show me when its done. i wanna see!!!


i amused myself at work by working on an art activity for Gingerbox. everyone was challenged to draw Brad Pitt. here's mine:



i started goofing with it in illustrator and grew very weary.
i need to sleep.



for the first time ever i intentionally took my monitor out of 1024x768. now its in 1680x1024 or something like that. more space. very good, except now the color hurt my eyes a little. or that may be because its almost 2am and i had two tests and a job today.

i am STARVING

i did a whole bunch of dishes before work, so there had better damn well be at least one clean pot and one clean strainer with which to make some damn pasta.
it is absurd that we have like two hundred tea spoons but only like five forks and only two saucepans. we use both of them everyday!

bit of an awkward day, so far. i awoke to les savy fav and, still lightheaded from last night's graphic designing, slumped over to my computer, hit snooze, and fell back into bed for ten minutes. after that, a quick glass of iced tea and some last minute studying for the american creativity test. i threw on a long sleeve button-up over my jesus t-shirt because its rather brisk out these days. the 34-question test, which i TOTALLY forgot was scantron, wasn't that bad. most of the things i made myself learn over the past week weren't even on the test and a handful of questions weren't even hinted at were asked. still, i feel pretty decent about it and i finished fairly quickly. after that we spent a couple hours watching clips from beach party, the graduate, and midnight cowboy.
a quick west wing break and i was off to my math test. fifteen minutes later i was out of there, and i spent most of that timechecking my answers. the second to last question, when i plugged in my answer it came out all wrong. i kept resolving the equation from scratch and i always came up with the same answer, but when i plugged it back into the equation, it never came out right. weird. oh well, one question.

my afternoon was a bit depressing between the news of dean giving up the election and iTunes tending to stick to Dar Williams and the New Amsterdams. that and the fact that its only wednesday and there is verrrrrrrrrrrry little food or drink in the apartment. this is what happens when i stay home to do homework and max and brian to the food shopping without me. i'm gonna make a biiiiiiiig bowl of trader joe's pasta when i get back. i am STARVING.

and its a decently busy night at the library. so far, i've needed to draft this message three times because just when things settle down, another forty people will come up and need my assistance.

his name is alive's "caroline's supposed demon" is my song for the evening.

my actual desktop may be a mess, but at least my computer's desktop is nice

i don't want time machines so much as i want the ability to teleport. whether by sheer will or by machine.

i'm wroking on starting a new trend: post-it art.
its so easy, you just carry around a pack of post-its and a ball point pen and you draw.
its easy to do thumbnails, sequentials, mosaics, and its just damn fun.
the next step i'm going to experiment with is then scanning the post-it and blowing up the illustration to a more acceptable size and working with it in photoshop. i think this could be a lot of fun.
post-it art rocks.

tables at the art fest are already sold out. maybe he can trick someone into letting him sneak in on one. i know jim mahfood got in last year by crashing in on his good friend scott morse and stealing half of his table. for more info on actually getting space at the art fest and its condition as of now, click here.

and the drawing is not mine, as i said in the post. the actual line drawing is by steve rolston. i even left his signature there in red. i just colored it, put the photo in back, and did all the scratching.

i plan to spend a little time each saturday and some of spring break working on the music until i actually have some skill. so far its just been blind stupidity.
over the summer, in addition to getting a job, i plan on working out a full album. anyone who cares to help is welcome. i'm pretty sure at least a couple songs will be done in heather's room as her mac is more efficient than mine (yours is a dual processor, right?)
i can just load up whatever i've already got recorded (as well as the GarageBand program, if she needs it) on my external hard drive and bring it over, along with my keyboard and microphone. anyone who wants to help out in anyway is welcome until i say otherwise. right now, due to the early stages of GarageBand and my sluggish single processor, it gives up as soon as a fifth track is introduced, or a third track with any effects. the way i rectify this (as i needed to do twice for "pop song #1" on saturday) was to do a rough layout of the song (come up with the rhythm, melody, and basic spacing for the vocals) and export that as an aiff. then, drag that aiff into a new track in the mixer window and mute the preexisting tracks. then add the next element or two over that and repeat the process until you've got a finished song. this technique is popularly known as "bouncing". the downside to this is that it becomes harder to edit the initial tracks, so with pop song i made sure the music was exactly the way i wanted it and knew exactly where and how long it would play, as well as my vocals, mixed the instruments the way i wanted and exported, then added each of the vocal tracks. i was very happy with the end result, except for some of the backup vocals.

its a busy night here at the library. both dean's american creativity class and rice's modern art class have tests tomorrow, so there's at least twenty people here crowded around the textbooks, study guides, slides and audio cds for said classes.
being in dean's class and having that test first thing in the morning and having looked over the study guide for over a week now, i'm really not good to go for this. there is so much crap he wants us to memorize. its not that many questions, the study guide, its jsut that they're all art history questions that we never even approached in class. hell, one of them i knew off the bat just because i happened to have read catcher in the rye, but as for the rest? am i really expected to name three musicians under each of two record producers that he names? why do i need to know the names of the two critics who supported the new york school and at least five women who were involved in the new york school? why did we spend twenty minutes talking about ed wood only to have nothing about him in either the study guide or the text book?
this test had better be insanely easier than the study guide.

additionally i have my first math test since high school tommorrow. the teacher said we could bring anything we wanted since its an open book test. if i were lousy at math, i'd bring a cell phone and be on the internet on the macs in the room at the time. instead, since i plan on having no sweat, i think i'll bring my discman and blast some his name is alive (i just got livonia in the mail today. sweet! though i still want my damn paycheck so i can buy supplies for my graphic design books. yes, she siad she wants two now)

i've been stressed with homework lately. both graphic design courses are starting to ask for a whole lot of brand new stuff and revisions to the stuff you thought was good before every day. it gets hard to accomplish anything when you've got so much to work on.

theater's still fun although i'm having more and more trouble not getting mad at some of the things people say and do. the biggest problem there, though, is that brent dropped out of the class a couple weeks ago without telling me. he was our ride to class, jessie and i. the class is held about five miles downtown. we've managed to talk steve into driving us there, which is super-great of him, but we have to work out a ride back every week as no one else in class is going back to campus and everyone we know with cars have class at that time.


i was working on graphic design for a few hours before when i found an immense pain in my stomach. took a few minutes of cringing to realize i was reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaally hungry. a big bowl of tortelloni was good, but i can feel my digestive system drying up right now and its no good.
i need some fruit juice.
and some money.
and a nice break from school.
and more money.

mmm...food...

i'd say more but i'm running late for class...i think...no...i have a couple minutes...okay...

i came to two conclusions upon listening to the pixies "debaser" twenty times yesterday morning:

1) - the only reason that it wasn't the biggest hit song of the past twenty years is that the radio sucks.

2) - when writing an awesome song, in addition to having a catchy hook, have the clinchpin line of each verse be in a different language. i know its the name of a movie in debaser, but the fact that he's screaming a french phrase after all this other great stuff...madness and totally singalongable.


i'm in the lab printing another draft of my graphic design book for the tape dispenser.
the printer is being stupid.
i doubt i'm going to sleep comfortably anytime soon, which is unfortunate.
i'll eaither be restlessly unable to sleep or asleep with far too much work left to do in the morning. i can't just do the work and then get a great nights sleep.

i'm having some trouble getting to sleep, so i put this together real quick using a sketch from steve rolston's webpage, a photo from my hard drive, and a couple of my favorite photoshop tricks:

songs that inspire frantic graphic designing and frantic headbopping on sunday night:

wilco - radio cure
rilo kiley - glendora
pixies - debaser
b'ehl - tag
the cure - inbetween days
brendon small - untitled tracks of guitar rocking from home movies
bright eyes - method acting
canadia - cavity search (fast)

GOOD NEWS: checked my mailbox and found His Name is Alive's "Mouth by Mouth"

BAD NEWS: checked the atm and i only have $26.93 in my bank account.

why must paychecks come a whole week after the end of the pay period. i SHOULD get my paycheck tommorrow, not a week from tommorrow.

try to do as little spending as possible for a week, then, next week, i can deposit $300 and be happy again.

i went comic shopping today as well. got y - the last man #18 and 19 as well as Demo #3

i also finished the ikea postcard poster i started a few weeks ago.

other than that, graphic design homework, recording that song (see three posts below), and generally slacking around.

goddammit, why must all the cool things happen while i'm at school?


actually...that's during my spring break. after megacon, i could fly back home and go to MoCCA then come back...but that seems unlikely to me. and stressful.

Happy heart day.

my gift to you, be my valentine: Pop Song #1

fixed the keyboard. it was a problem with the USB, not GarageBand. sounds great now. after watching some sifl and olly and hearing their songs, i'm a bit more lax about mine as they obviously didn't try very hard and still came up with awkward songs i like to listen to.

Holy crap!

Barbie and Ken have split up!!! No kidding! and it looks like the now-single California surf girl Barbie has her eyes on the hunky Austrailian surfer dude, Blaine.

just shelved five carts of books and one cart of videos in under an hour and a half.

upgraded GarageBand to version 1.1 but now it doesn't recognize my midi keyboard.

that is very very bad.

i know people are antsy to see some new stuff from me, and trst me, there's stuff to show, its just that i don't have the time and energy to publish it as yet.
with that in mind, the front page to my ringling portfolio shows off a nifty little image i made for my graphic design class.

additionally, i am now on PureVolume
its like mp3.com, but not as trashy.

as amusing as that is, its "nanotechnology". "Nano," not "nanno."

and "WHOO! HEATHER! NAAAAAAAKEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED!!! Yeah!"

and very cool about zach flagg. i somehow found my way to his webpage around september or so (i think it was linked from faryl dalrymple's webpage or something) and yeah, he's all kinds of good. that MSI piece is pretty weird, though. i guess no one can draw steve righ? looking sort of decent, right?


well, the official press release has been...um...relased, so i'm no longer sworn to secrecy about this. MoCCA is officially moving to 594 Broadway (between Houston and Prince)
the entire fourth floor is MoCCA's space, approximately tripling the amount of space we had back in Union Square. in case you're not entirely familiar with the streets, this new location is a mere TWO BLOCKS away from the Puck building, so expect a heavy push during the art fest to get people to take a break from the festivities to visit the actual museum space. i expect this will help establish the museum in the minds of the fans because, for the most part, they still see MoCCA as the art fest, and east coast version of SPX. well, this way they can see that there is an actual museum which is there year round with a full calendar of activites, not just the art fest. i think after this june, MoCCA is going to become a force to be reckoned with in the world of comic and cartoon arts and education.

are you sure you logged in, heather? i know they put in new security deals so you can't vote unless you're signed in. still though, you should be able to comment anonymously...so i don't know what the problem there is.

i'd say talk to the peeps at MoCCA the first week of june. that's when they started the volunteers meetings last year. that was also when i first met most of the MoCCA staff, who were surprised that some kid they'd never heard of had already hit up all the locations they'd thought of to hang up Art Fest posters.

check your email for more info. i'm afraid i can't say much else on the topic yet.

and as for the iTunes game, you get a code which you type in which automatically adds 99 cents to your account so you can download whatever the hell you want. with that in mind, sigur ros has uploaded the original songs from that ballet they did with radiohead to iTunes. only the sigur ros songs, not the radiohead.

i'm working on a couple of blues songs between graphic design homework. they're stressing me a little, trying to write record and mix a serious song, but its a great deal of fun.
i decided that to unwind and just release a bit, i'll do a cover of "exquisite dead guy"
the recording process should take no more than an hour for the entire song. and i love anything where i have to harmonize with myself vocally.

in american creativity, we went over the beat movement, which was great fun and i was very happy with it until i looked at my watch and realized it had only been an hour and i was already falling asleep.
in math, he gave out a review sheet with 15 questions and then wrote three questions on the board which he'd forgotten. i finished all 18 in fifteen minutes, pausing to write down the ones on the board as he added them and to check my answers.
they were all right.
by the end of class he'd only gotten up to question 4 on the review sheet.

Damon Hurd's A Sort of Homecoming #2 should be in better comic book stores today. go get yourself a copy. if you happen to live in Sarasota, FL, go get me a copy. i'll pay you back.

i've been paying very much attention to the voting over at MacJams.com and i have to say that alot of that music is pretty terrible and a lot of those people have pretty lousy taste in music to like some of those songs.
also, i'm pretty sure a handful of people are cheating terribly. some of the lousiest songs on there are getting 23 votes while some of the more high quality ones are getting ziltch. i'm not complaining about mine (currently at a respectable 13 votes and in eighth place), but really, if i weren't in this competition at all i'm pretty sure i'd just make as many outrageous songs as i could just to spite them all.
bad music pisses me off, and these people can't differentiate.

i'm sorry...i'm sorry...overreacting, i'm sure.

we'll see if they like my TMBG cover when its done.

i just got an email from a high school senior in philly asking if he could use my leonardo sketch in his high school yearbook.
i happen to generally dislike that picture. i worked on it little by little over the winter break last year because i could never seem to get the lineweight right, and it shows. i think the donatello one i did a month prior in one day came out MUCH better (i never did finish the raph and mike pics, though i sketched them.)
i emailed him back to find out more about why he wants to use it. i happen to think there are much better pictures of leonardo on the internet and i have much better sketches on that webpage, so why does he want to use this one?

oh well...


oh, some of you might be interested to know that the upcoming version 5.0 webpage will herald the return of both "Billy's World" and the gift sketches section, both notoriously absent from version 4 and very much missed.
i did get at least one complaint about the absent billy's world, even though i haven't drawn one billy's world strip in something like ten months. and i just plain miss the gift sketches. i think it classes up the internet to have more high quality work like that. plus, i want to get as many more of those as i can in the near future. this summer i'm definitely going to try to get one from james kochalka, at least. i somehow missed him last summer. of course, getting a second one from each of the people i already had sketches from would be lovely. and i so far have been unsuccessful in scanning the mo willems sketch as it is larger than the scanner back home and jigsaw piecing it together never lines up right.

someday in the future i will begin to upload the fifth version of my ringling webpage, this time it will hopefull be smaller and easier and all that jazz.

and i will revive the brief bio, last seen in version 3.7, completely lost in version 4.

so here's a first draft on that bio (typing this at work with no notes or anything)

Derrick Sanskrit Kennelty-Cohen was born in the 1980's. Alot of people consider that to be his first mistake. He was born to two hippie mathematicians who had already thought ahead to have a sister ready for his arrival. When Derrick was in the second grade, he and his sister both got head lice. To distract them from the painful anti-lice shampoo, their mother gave the sister a Rainbrow Brite jigsaw puzzle and gave Derrick a copy of X-Men #1 (1992, the Magneto cover), starting him on a long-lasting obsession with comic books. When the elder sister began Girl Scouts and no longer had time for her brother, the parents had a second daughter to keep him company. Both sisters have since learned to enjoy his presence for short periods of time. Every summer of their lives, their father would bring the entire family to the Philadelphia Folk Festival, sparking the children's obsessions with music.
Despite a quick rise through ranks and numerous presitious awards, Derrick's own venture into the Boy Scouts was viewed as a social failure and thus terminated.
In school, Derrick developed a taste for the arts, governement, math and science and a severe disdain for disrespect (note: i don't like having the prefix "dis-" repeated so closely...change that.) which often got him into trouble. In elementary school, he was often held indoors during recess (an activity time which he found often boring), and in high school he was often written off by teachers as a "trouble-maker" and "slacker". At least once a year he was criticized for illegible notes surrounded by ball-point pen sketched comic strips.
Despite this poor image, Derrick still received high test scores and took as many high-level courses as his weak, boney body could handle. He was also very active in extracurricular activities. He was one of the most-award winning members of his school's Model Congress debate team and served as captain of the school's Math Team, as well as contibuting to both the school newspaper and literary magazine.
Derrick's first love is graphic art. He is a devoted comic book enthusiast and freelance graphic designer. His second love is music. He has a broad collection of compact discs covering the broadest ends of the musical spectrum, from French Orchestral to South Philadelphia Hip-Hop to Canadian Folk to Australian Punk to Michigan Experimental R&B to New York New Wave.
Derrick is currently studying Graphic Design at the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida, home to countless degenerates and lowlifes. Its not entirely different from his home in New York except for the parts which are entirely different from his home in New York.



yeah...i need to edit that alot.

i've been in a real His Name is Alive fix as of late. i downloaded most of Mouth to Mouth and Stars on E.S.P. but its just not enough, so once again i looked them up on amazon to see what was cheap and used right now. so i just ordered my very own copies of Livonia, Mouth to Mouth, and Stars on E.S.P./Nice Day for the combined cost of twenty dollars, including shipping. when someone's offering them under nine bucks, i'll work my way up to buying Home Is In Your Head, Ft. Lake, and Last Night


also, if anyone's wants to win free iTunes downloads (because i know i do) but doesn't like Pepsi (because i know i don't), 7-11 now has iTunes cups. every 32 oz. fountain soda is eligible to win an iTunes download. sweet!


additionally, over at MacJams.com, "Jesus (Was Awesome)" is currently the tenth highest ranked song. woohoo!
if i win, i'll get a $20 iTunes gift certificate.
i don't know what i'm gonna do with all these iTunes downloads i'm trying to win. madness...

no, there are no trader joe's anywhere in florida, which sucks as i had eaten trader joe's almost exclusively from seventh grade through twelfth. but it sure is a treat when i'm home.


and here's some news for ya. i just got an email from MoCCA. turns out that the Harvey Awards this year (which will be presented at the MoCCA Art Fest for the first time as they will be from now on) will feature a very special keynote speaker, one Neil Gaiman

so anyone who hasn't already decided that the MoCCA Art Fest is something worth their time and effort, i advise you to think again.
james kochalka comes every year. brian wood comes every year. frank miller comes every year. evan dorkin comes every year. every year there's a really great lifetime acheivement recipient. two years ago it was jules feiffer. last year it was art spiegleman. i have been sworn to secrecy regarding this years at least until the official press release, but i'm telling you, its gonna be great. and now, we've got Neil Gaiman as a keynote speaker!!!


now i know i had nothing to do with this as its a Harveys related deal, and Gaiman has won a few Harveys in his days, but i was heavily involved in the Harveys last year, and i was the one who mentioned to Lawrence how we should try to contact Neil and see if he were interested in doing anything at the Art Fest way back on June 30th, which Lawrence thought was a great idea.
i still think i have very little impact on what MoCCA does, but Lawrence did point out to me that Bill Sienkiewicz donated a piece of art to the Forbes fundraiser and i was the one who had spoken to Bill on behalf of MoCCA to get him involved.




as per my own life, i'm heavily entrenched in graphic design projects, which i feel very good about. the the heavily entrnched part, but i'm very pleased with my final turnouts.

so bush has declared himself a "war president"

is that supposed to be a good thing? is he trying to liken himself to truman or wilson? now they were some great war presidents.
the difference here is that they didn't choose to be war presidents, they chose to be productive. wilson had nothing to do with the formation of his war, the rest of the world sort of did all the work there. wilson used this time to come up with numerous productive policies including the formation of the original league of nations. truman came in in the middle of a war and was active in the signing of the UN charter to ensure world peace.
bush, however, came in during a fairly peaceful period of american history and chose to go out and destroy, and now we're in a load of trouble for it.

so yeah, there have been some great war presidents, but i'd prefer if bush didn't compare himself to them, he's ruining their reps.

out of curiosity, i like to check the trader joe's webpage every once in a while to see what's new.

right now, the Chai Mocha Almonds and the Oatmeal Cranberry Dunkers sound nice.
of course, neither is much fun without a warm cup of tea.

ah...trader joe's food is so relaxing and nice...


i'm really quite happy with the way my graphic design homework is coming out this weekend. i just wish it were coming out faster so i didn't spend all my time in front of the computer. still, i plan on making a handful of stickers tonight using my favorite designs from this assignment.
the keyboard is rocking, despite its quaint size.
i'm going to try to upgrade to panther tonight. jeff owes me for giving him garageband last week and i really think it will speed things up. i already checked and my hard drive works fine on panther.

i also need to work with jesse on our scene for theater tonight.
the way class has been going, odds are slim we'll have to perform tomorrow, but its something we want to do anyway.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand new episode of home movies tonight, the one show i take time out of my busy schedule to watch.

i'm a li'l hungry. i'm thinking pasta tonight. i have a few bags of trader joe's tortelloni and mini ravioli, i think i'll boil a bag, maybe a bag and a half if brian and max are interested. half a bag is good for me, so i think the three of us will be fine with a bag and a half.


...and i'm sneezing a lot right now. fun.

yeah, its supposed to do that. the easy way to read the blog would be to bookmark it, silly.
next time you read this, add the bookmark.

today i did a lot of graphic design homework, but i still have more to do in the morning.

also, i bought an M-Audio Oxygen 8 USB Midi Keyboard. we went to sam ash to see what they had, and they only had one left and it was 25% off. it plays really well and i'm happy with it. i just need to clean out my hard drive a bit more because GarageBand yells at me for running out of memory when i record more than two tracks in one session.

i'm unsure whether max's post was directed towards myself, albert, or the general populous.

nonetheless, i want to remind everyone that i think max and brian are awesome. i can't imagine having more excellent roomates or friends here on campus. our humor is x-acto sharp and we just fucking click. i also love the fact that we're all different majors. as much as i now fit in and get along with alot of the other graphic design students, i just couldn't live with them. i need you guys with your entirely different workloads and mindsets to fall back on.

and i'm so freaking stokes mia's back. the only person i hung out with while home and did not get a picture of, somehow.
and i could never stand ten hours of commute. you are a stronger one than i. hell, i had a hard time with my commute over the summer, and that was about seven hours a week, counting subways and walking, discounting any special assignments lawrence sent me on.


my stomach is very upset.
when i came back from work there was a rather awkward odor in the apartment. its still lingering, despite my attempts to freshen the air. i think the odor is making me ill as my stomach is now in palpatation mode.

i need new music.

we're generally convinced that everyone thinks we're assholes.

last semester, there were always people hanging out in our apartment. people came to visit all of us. then we started getting into little tiffs and max, brian, and i all use humor as defense mechanisms (and pretty well, i'd like to add) and as the semester went on fewer and fewer people hung out here. people would come to get you if they needed you somewhere, but never really socially.

our methods of making ourselves more content with the environment seemed to offend everyone else.
the best examples of this would be my faking an argument with maarten just to end the argument he'd been having with max for forty-five minutes (a technique almost everyone i know back home has used numerous times) and my writing a note on the dry erase board that i didn't want to be part of any more poorly organized parties, which seemed to fill albert with a deadly rage.
these were just my ways to quickly remove myself from situations causing me duress and get a quick laugh while i was at it, an opportunity i have never passed up once in my life (even at my grandmother's funeral i was making jokes in my head. its how i cope with anything unpleasant.) and they resulted in people getting mad and pretty much writing off max, brian and i.

it pesters me because, and no offense to you guys about this, max and brian are much more vocal about things that bother them, and they get much more aggressive and in people's faces about it. i'm the passive one who makes jokes. yet i'm the one who gets all the flack. i'm the one who gets the death stares and i'm the one who has to deal with hypocritical instant messages late at night and i'm the one people get mad at.

well, i somehow managed to get suzanne mad at me tonight (max and brian seemed more confused by it than i was, and they were there the whole time) and it dawned on me that i'm not really that much of an asshole.

sure, the three of us always laugh about what asshole we are because of these incident and the terrible jokes we make in each other's company, but really, we're not that bad.

all my friends from new york can attest to the fact that i am extremely mellow on the scale of insults. everywhere i go at home, 80% of the people around me are more aggressive and offensive than i. i'm a pansy.

so i advise everyone who's feelings i have hurt to never go to new york unless you plan on completely ignoring everyone else there.

on that topic, just now i got an email from eBay (it wasn't there five minutes ago) telling me i was outbid on the oxygen 8 keyboard i bid on.
i'd bid again, but another ten dollars and it'll cost as much as a brand new keystation 49e, which is the one i really want anyway.
it'd be cool to have the oxygen 8, but the keystation 49e is what will get the most use out of me, odds are.

if anyone's in the need for a new set of pastels soon, laurie alerted me to these Yarka Russian Pastel Sets which look like a damn good deal.

i'm proud to say that, after the news became all the big deal and whatnot, i thought about googling "janet jackson" to see what all the big deal was, but i never did until just after reading that bbc article right now.

google image searching her doesn't even bring up the pictures from the superbowl, so the internet is offically not as degraded society would have us believe.
however, half of the files i've seen on BitTorrent this week mention "janet jackson" and "super bowl" in the titles, which makes me sad. i just go on there to download episodes of home movies, but the internet is still home to countless pathetic lonely people.

kim elam, my type instructor, is very pleased with my understanding of the subject matter and my approach to the projects we're on right now, which makes me feel all good to have a teacher have nothing but positive things to say to me about my work. the workload is significantly less than graphic design this semester, but i do feel i'm learning more thanks to that. allowing me to spend more time focusing on the goals and coming up with the best solutions i can rather than feeling the need to rush through and crank out as many results as possible like i do for kendra polshek's class. she likes to have us do that, as we did literally hundreds of sketches per person last semester before ever approaching the computer to start developing our logos.
i'm actually working on another twenty or so images for kendra's class right now. madness.
additionally, i'm doing my laundry and have noticed two things:

1) - it is impossible for me to keep a white pair of socks white. i came to school this semester with a whole batch of brand-new socks still in the plastic bag. i would wear them for two days (not two straight days, just whenever i needed to leave my room) and throw them in the laundry bag. upon doing the laundry, i realize that, post "cleaning", they are still browned on the bottoms. ewwwww...i went through all the effort to have that not happen, and here it is...
so unless i change my socks three times a day and throw them in the laundry afterwards or soak my socks in a bucket of bleach, i am doomed to never keep white socks.

2) - my back sweats alot when i sleep. there's a noticable darkness on my mattress right where my back goes that fades to nothing as it approaches the small of my back, and entirely cuts off where my pillow rests.



i feel discombobulated...i need to do something that isn't graphic design for a little while...i need something...

i need a usb midi keyboard, that's what i need...

yo brian, i fixed your post so it goes directly to the article rather than the BBC news front page. only reason i did that is because the article won't be on the front page anymore come tommorrow.

and after reading the whole article...i still don't know why we'd want to do that...its just seems horribly wrong...mice with human sperm...ewww...too..many...ellipses...

i am quite content with the design with type homework i finished today, and i've been jotting down ideas for my graphic design homework, which i'll get to after class tommorrow when i have the time.
in american creativity today, he told us that the test would have more or less nothing to do with any of the things we go over in class, rather it would review the material in the text book which we never discuss.
good to know there's a reason i bother showing up other than attendance points. today we watched a scene from streetcar named desire, a scene from west side story, and about an hour of a documentary covering the birth of rock and roll.

math was funny today. funny because i realized what a lousy education the rest of my class had in grade school.
now, these aren't dumb people. i can see from the way they've picked up most of the work we've done in class that they're capable of learning this, its just sad that their teachers never tried to challenge them like mine did...and its funny when they're just plain wrong and don't realize it.
at one point today, we had to find the sum of 1 and 1/2.

i kid you not.

and when he write the process on the board (converting 1 to 2/2 and adding 2/2 to 1/2 to come up with 3/2) a couple of kids insisted that 2/2 was the answer and we were pulling the other 1/2 out of nowhere. we spent five minutes explaining to 2/2 IS 1 and that the 1/2 that was there was the exact same 1/2 that had always been there.

you don't even need to know how any of this works, as long as you can read the notation in the formula. seriously. not having thought to bring one of my own calculators from home, brian lent me his for the semester. its a basic texas instruments scientific calculator, even simpler and more streamlined than any of the ones i've used since 6th grade, and it has all the keys and functions i need to just type in the equation as it is given and come up with the answer (in fraction form, might i add)

even though i can do most (so far all) of the problems given in my head, the calculator CAN do it all for me, so these people just don't know what they're doing...and that amuses me.

for my creative geometry class, we had to make a piece of art using at least one golden rectangle.
a golden rectangle is one thats legs are in proportion 1:1.6
it is called golden because it is the rectangle most aesthetically pleasing to the human eye and also, if one were to cut the length of the golden rectangle to the size of the windth in order to make a square, the remaining length and width would produce a smaller golden rectangle.

anyway, here's my composition. made entirely of golden rectangles and terrible, terrible gradients:

i'd like to repeat that i think think tank is a mostly lousy album.

coffee and tv is one of the best songs of the past five years, however.

talkin' about coolness here, graphic design style.
so i found a new book in the library today about chipp kidd, my favorite graphic designer. he specializes in book covers and is probably the most demanded book cover designer in the united states, and everyone knows SOMETHING that he's done.
example: he did the covers for most of michael crichton's books, including jurassic park for which he created the exaggerated image of a tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, which was reused for the logo for the jurassic park movies, merchandising, and theme park at universal studios orlando, making it one of the most recognizable symbols of the 1990's
alot of us (and by us i mean my friends specifically) know mr. kidd best from his debut novel, the cheese monkeys, a book that was entirely written in Quark so he was aware of the book's design as he was writing it.
he's also an insanely huge batman freak. he co-wrote the offical guide to batman: the animated series along with series writer and co-creator paul dini. kidd, of course, designed the whole book as well.

anyway, as i was reading through this book about chipp's design work, i noticed that his favorite and most influential teacher when he was still a student at penn state was one Lanny Sommese, a truly awesome graphic designer (this one specializing in posters) whom i actually met yesterday when he gave a presentation to my design with type class. Sommese's posters make up one-half of the exhibit currently on display at the Center for Innovation and Collaboration, a building on campus that was promised as a new collaborative workspace for students by January 2003 (that's over a year ago, now) and has so far been used only three times to my knowledge, (and never the whole building, just foyer and the first hallway on the first floor) for nights of prestigious art shows expected to bring in people with immense wallets ready to donate to the arts.

Sommese's presentation yesterday was inspiring. it energized my enthusiasm as a designer and as an illustrator.
but after reviewing kidd's gallery of work in this book, i feel even worse. there's no way that i can do as much work as he did or be as insanely awesome at it as he is. the man produces approximately 75 book covers a year in addition to editing a line of graphic novels and co-writing numerous retrospectives.
goddamn, that's a lot of work.

i can't just be good at this. i need to be friggin' fantastic. i don't need to be rich, i just need to not have to worry about money.

i love what i do and i love the arts and i love that i can call myself an artist without having to come up with a skewed vision of art to call myself that and i love understanding and appreciating art, especially since most of my friends are other artists and i love their art as well, but i just...well...i've still got some insecurities about life as an artist.
will i be content making corporate art that allows me to live in a really sweet apartment decked out in the best ikea has to offer with a couple of great computers and a well-stocked kitchen, or would i rather have to struggle at it and not live so sweetly but make those awesome images that stay with people like Sommese and Kidd do?
i'd really like if i could do both...but that would require me to be one hell of an artist...

i've still got a lot to learn.

isn't it funny how that will work out? like how my figure drawings last year came out sloppy and aggressive if i was listening to frenzal rhomb or flat and static if i were listening to sublime.

i refuse to blame it on the fact that i'm not an illustrator.

i keep seeing the name squarepusher all over the internet but i haven't heard anything by them.

think i'll look 'em up.

i forgot how good an album No Cities Left is

our tongues may have touched, but all i remember was your nose, and i suppose all eyes were closed.
two days have passed, and all i want is gone for good this time.

the dears need to make another album, like, now.

we attended an 80's movie night last night. of the thirty-something movies the people brought, we watched two: the goonies and the shining.
it was alright except we ran out of drinks (and hawaiian punch grape juice was exactly as terrible as i thought it would be) and chris felt the need to point out facts about the movies that were really rather uninteresting.
one of my favorites was towards the end of the goonies: "they actually built a pirate ship for this scene."
really? wow...and here i thought they built a giant panda and used computer graphics to make it look like a pirate ship...NO SHIT, SHERLOCK!
there were precious few uninteresting and pointless facts about the shining that he didn't point out to us. this morning brian and max joked about feeding chris false information about the movies to see how he reacted. my contribution was this:
"few people realize that stanley kubrick was actually born in the 22nd century. oh yeah, the reason his movies are so good is that he saw them his whole life. they'er almost classics now, so of course they're classics in the 22nd century. everyone knows everything about those movies. so stanley travelled back in time and directed the films exactly as he remembered them, which is why they're so awesome. he had already seen the movie a million times before they started production!"

naturally, half the crowd left during the latter half of the shining. not teh kind of film you want to see at that hour. makes you sleepy. its very drawn out and dull at times. most everyone agreed afterward that it would have been more fun if we'd put on UHF instead, but half the people there had never seen the shining before and half the people there had never even heard of UHF, so ther was more of a demand for the shining.

simpsons did it better anyway.