Father's Day Is Coming And He Takes Commissions ...

Baseball Paintings — Pete Sack Art

Something like a 2000 Pedro Martinez Topps #60 would make a great subject. Just sayin'.

Who's that on the cover the of The Smiths' debut album, and the rest for that matter?

The Smiths - The Stories Behind All 27 Of Their Provocative Album And Single Sleeves | NME.COM

Went from having "Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before" in my head to "One Night in Bangkok."

Ugh.

Return of Bamyan Buddhas with help of 3D image display

Return of Bamyan Buddhas with help of 3D image display - Khaama Press (KP) | Afghan News Agency: 

Image via Khaama Press

The historic Bamyan Buddhas made a return for the first time with the help of 3D image display which was projected in the empty place of the original Buddha that was destroyed by Taliban militants.

Side note: this story was a reminder I've been blogging a long time. Long enough to have posted about the destruction of the statues back when it happened.

 ᔥ io9

Tagging Now A Felony With Prison Time In North Carolina Thanks To HB552

Tagging A Building With Graffiti Could Get You Felony Prison Time In North Carolina | WUNC:

State lawmakers are expected to send Gov. Pat McCrory on Wednesday a bill that would make graffiti vandalism a felony if performed by repeat offenders.

Since the story was written, the bill was signed in to law. Because our legislature here has nothing better to do.

Watch out, Banksy.

Vincent and the Doctor - "Can you see how they roar their light?"

Vincent and the Doctor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Series 5, Episode 10 (Overall Series Story # 214) | Previous - Next | Index

Image via arthurpendragonns

Having just watched "Arc of Infinity," taking this one up now felt like it could've be too soon for another episode with a space chicken. Especially a space chicken in an episode written by Richard Curtis, who wrote (among other things) Love, Actually. Which is another way of saying, oh boy, watch out, this could really be awful.

Although this story is well-loved in fandom and, generally speaking, critically admired, my instinct is to approach it skeptically, even though I remember enjoying it when it originally aired. That's not how I approach Doctor Who, especially not on first watch. I *want* to like it. Even if I've read unnerving things ahead of time, I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt. That doesn't mean everything gets a pass. There've been times even my wanting to like it, being willing to make allowances, I've been badly let down. Because I wasn't by this one, even though most of the signs pointing to I Should Have Been, re-watching it with an eye towards writing about it in what passes for criticism here I was sharpening the knives for dissection.

And, if we're frank, I think we have to admit it's emotionally manipulative, we should be chafed by having our heartstrings pulled so deliberately. Especially with that blandly symphonic pop encouraging us to revel in We're So Awesome, We Love Van Gogh (or, as it's pronounced in this story "Van G**clears throat**"), Not Like Those Dullards Back When When People Were Moronic Dirt Farmers. Our love is healing. Blah, blah, self-congratulatory joy.

And yet ... even knowing it's a cynical ploy, we fall for it when watching this story. Every. Time. Nighy's Black praising Van Gogh, while Vincent listens, tears welling, the music rising to a crescendo, the camera swirling, it's A Very Special Doctor Who Hallmark Channel Movie moment and my throat tightens and I want to hug Vincent and Black despite myself.

So how does that happen, because if it's that and only that, then there's a problem and we should be dismissing it as tripe.

How it happens is, I think, twofold: for one, Tony Curran as Vincent is more than just a set piece, -- though he's occasionally fetishized as one, shown with his self-portrait, just as we're shown the cafe and the painting, his room and the painting of it. "Look, we can put on TV things that look like Van Gogh paintings!" -- he effectively plays Vincent as both fragile and strong, manic and depressive, proud and humble; for another, there's mirroring going on and, for whatever reason, when we see characters negotiate the narrative by checking reflections, working off mediated images, recognizing themselves or others in ways they don't by just direct line of sight, there's something a little magical in how that affects me as a watcher of a story on a screen -- one who's not paying attention to the screen, but trying to understand the story in it, that puts me in a like mindspace with the character I'm watching, or an imagined like mindspace that I'm exploring at the prompting of a storyteller.

Weird, right? I mean, TV doesn't just get better because a character looks through a pane of glass and sees a thing on the other side of in the dark, while we see their reflection in the glass because they're in a lit room ... but when the story is also about how people see things, and how seeing these does powerful things to our minds, there are layers and kinds of reflecting going on (we call that thing we do where we think about an object of thought "reflecting") that can absorb the shock of the maudlin or elsewhere in a story, or re-frame it so we're more attuned to why it's successful at doing what it's doing ...

Blurted Thoughts:

Watching this episode calls to mind again the Van Gogh that was found a couple years back with both the TARDIS and a Cyberman (well, that you could squint and sort of see) in it.

Thought I was on to a Doctor Who / Downton Abbey connection that others had missed, but no. I mistook Chrissie Cotterill for Lesley Nicol.

Had to look it up because it was escaping me while watching, the term for hearing color is synesthesia. This story suggests Vincent was synesthetic.

The line "If you paint it, he will come," sounded like a Field of Dreams nod to me.

Additional Resources:
http://www.chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/31-10.htm
http://www.philipsandifer.com/2014/04/the-pleasure-of-smelling-flower-vincent.html
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Vincent_and_the_Doctor_%28TV_story%29
http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/doctor-who-vincent-and-the-doctor-42320
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/DoctorWhoS31E10VincentAndTheDoctor
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/12/-em-love-actually-em-is-the-least-romantic-film-of-all-time/282091/

Street Graffiti (That Could Be This Blog's Avatar)

Social Media Street Graffiti = Stenciled Signs of Our Times | Urbanist

Clear Eyes, Full Heart ...

Awakening to Cultural Studies: 

Leonard Nimoy’s death reminded me of a moment in college. I don’t remember what year it was, but I was talking with a student who was writing a paper—or was it a senior thesis?—on Star Trek. The thesis was about how the show’s representations of race filtered and processed various anxieties and aspirations of the Cold War, particularly ideas about civil rights in the US and decolonization abroad.
 Remembering this conversation reminded me of one of the critical aspects of my college education: realizing that mass culture was a thing, something to be studied, analyzed, approached with the same critical eye that you would bring to a literary text or historical event.

I don't recall a moment like that, where I stopped thinking about pop culture one way, and started thinking about it another, but it's worth reminding ourselves each time we find ourselves liking a TV show, a movie, a commercial, a politician, a policy, the status quo, etc. without knowing why that someone else probably knows full well why. The tastes we indulge uncritically are the ones that tell us the most about our prejudices; it's worth examining them, if only to understand how those beliefs make us exploitable.

When we are exploitable, it's a safe bet we're being exploited. (Nature abhors a vacuum.) Exploitation is just another way of saying we're allowing someone to take advantage of someone else without accountability. Injustice thrives in the absence of accountability.

Things matter. It's often the things we think don't matter that point us towards what's really the matter.

So what I'm saying is, if you think Mr. Spock doesn't matter, that's (as a profoundly wise friend of mine might say) another sadness ...

On the difficulty of gaining perspective ...

454 W 23rd St New York, NY 10011—2157: 

Most forgeries ‘fall out’ after about fifty years or so; in other words, they conform to the popular image of the artist held at the time the fake was made ... Later generations, who see the artist quite differently, distinguish between the ‘true’ appearance of his work and the ideas held about him by an earlier generation of admirers and smugly wonder how their fathers could have been so easily deceived.
—Entry: fakes and forgeries, The Penguin Dictionary of Art and Artists, p. 175, Peter and Linda Murray

Franzen on PC v. Mac, utility v. design, and the what the Bezosification of the world is doing to humanity ...

Jonathan Franzen: what's wrong with the modern world:

The techno-boosters, of course, see nothing wrong here. They point out that human beings have always outsourced memory – to poets, historians, spouses, books. But I'm enough of a child of the 60s to see a difference between letting your spouse remember your nieces' birthdays and handing over basic memory function to a global corporate system of control.

Mixed feelings about the overall theme. Seems spot-on in places, veers towards (and then away from) conservative bleating about progress destroying humanity. Suspect we'll all agree it's a well-written piece. If nothing else it makes me want to read Karl Kraus.

The TARDIS and Cyberman in that newly discovered Van Gogh painting?

There’s something that looks a whole lot like the TARDIS in that newly discovered Van Gogh painting | TV | Great Job, Internet! | The A.V. Club:

Though the piece is titled “Sunset At Montmajour” and the structure in the background is likely Mountmajour Abbey, it still bears a striking resemblance to the TARDIS — a ridiculous coincidence, since the Doctor visited Van Gogh back in a 2010 episode ...

Is that a Cyberman waving to us just in what I'll call the top right corner of the lower left quadrant? Squint, and you can't miss it.

Squint harder ...

Looking 32,000 Years into the Past: Q&A With Author Kim Stanley Robinson | LiveScience

Looking 32,000 Years into the Past: Q&A With Author Kim Stanley Robinson | LiveScience: 

The Chauvet Cave — that discovery was, like, 1995, and coffee table books appeared about 1999. The Herzog movie was in 2011 or 2010 and when I decided to do the people who painted that cave, it clarified a lot of things. It meant it was south France, it meant it was 32,000 years ago, it meant it was full-on Ice Age, and that the Neanderthals were still alive, some of them at least. It gave me my focus.
I became convinced that they probably were living as comfortably as possible, given the state of their knowledge about medicine and the universe. It became really interesting to think about how they didn't have writing, that this is a crucial technology that actually changes consciousness. Without it they were different from us in terms of how they transmitted their information from one generation to the next. It would become really important to teach master [to] apprentice. It would be really important to memorize things, to have a really talking culture so that their language would be Shakespearean — a very sophisticated talking culture, because they didn't have writing.

Coming Soon: 'Shaman,' By Kim Stanley Robinson

Book Review: 'Shaman,' By Kim Stanley Robinson : NPR: 

As you can hear, Robinson keeps stylization of the language to a minimum, without stooping too low, so that the story itself can break free of the page and linger in the mind — which worked for me. Maybe it's because the world he creates feels so authentic and complete, but for several nights running, something happened to me that's never happened to me before, in all the years I've been reading novels. I dreamed I was living in Loon's world, traveling in the same tribe, along streams and rivers, through forest and over hills in an ancient state of mind.

I've got a few more Doctor Who posts to flesh out in the next five days, then I'll be shifting gears to reading, re-reading, and going on and on about Shaman. New Kim Stanley Robinson! 5 days ...

Doctor Who goggled

Doctor Who - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia | goggles

I contributed (very slightly, it was nearly complete before I arrived) to the TARDIS on on Doctor Who wikipedia page. In case it's gone before long, here's how it looked ...

'Six-Gun Gorilla' #1: The Comic *I* Should Be Reading This Week

'Six-Gun Gorilla' #1: The Comic You Should Be Reading This Week | UPROXX

I'm really not a comic book guy. I've made half-hearted attempts to be at various times and have a few issues of The Green Hornet, some Doctor Who stuff, a few trade paperbacks of essentials like The Watchmen and Love and Rockets as a result. It's unlikely I'll end up actually reading Six-Gun Gorilla, but knowing it exists, and has that cover, that is satisfying in and of itself.

Sure, I'll answer your questionnaire ...

Louis C.K.: The Proust Questionnaire | Vanity Fair: 

Which talent would you most like to have?   

I wish I could draw. I can’t make a thing in my mind go on paper. I draw like a child. Like a heavily beaten and molested child. Who can’t draw.

Yes. My talent wish as well. I can draw a little. Well enough to impress my six-year-olds, but still like an adult who was heavily beaten and perhaps only lightly molested as a child. If I could draw ... oh boy ... watch out. There'd be drawings all over this blog. The old Glasgow Kiss series would probably still be going because I'd be having so much fun drawing exquisitely detailed, artfully composed scenes of yours truly delivering nose-bloodying, tooth-loosening Glasgow kisses to the likes of Sen. Richard Burr, et al.

The Women of Film Noir | NCMA Film Festival

NCMA: 

The women of film noir. Innocent or sinister. Hard boiled or sweet as pie. They are one of the reasons these films from half a century ago remain edgy and appealing. There are so many ways to behave and misbehave in the dark alleys of noir.

Just learning about this now! Aaargh. Now to figure out if there's a way to juggle schedules to at least make it to one.

We're on the verge of losing the utility of the saying, "Don't judge a book by its cover."

Hack the Cover — by Craig Mod: 

CARDON WEBB'S SERIES DESIGN FOR OLIVER SACKS ᔥ @craigmod

Why? 

Why the cover? To protect the innards.
Why a half-title? It's a hold-over from when there weren't covers.
Why cloth? Cloth is a damn fine material in which to wrap stuff you want to protect. 

There is a tremendous opportunity for book designers and software engineers to figure out what our digital book procession should be. There's clearly something lost when you're thrown into a text without context — but how should that context be delivered? What 'function' should a cover serve in the digital book space? And even: What is the cover?

Artist totally ought to incorporate the #GlasgowKiss into his Santa series!

Student art attacks commercial spirit of Christmas | Education | guardian.co.uk: 

Image ᔥ Darren Cullen

While the rest of the country is obsessing, or studiously ignoring, the impending general election, Glasgow art student Darren Cullen has bigger things on his mind. Tomorrow he will unveil a 6.10m x 3.5m (20ft x 10ft) billboard on one of the city's main roads appealing to parents to "Stop lying to your children about Santa Claus". 

The poster, which features a slightly demonic looking Father Christmas looming over a small boy, is part of the art student's campaign to put an end to the commercialisation of Christmas and to launch an attack on the advertising industry's targeting of children. "Santa gives more to rich kids than poor kids," declares the poster, which will be on Glasgow's Balmore Road.

My wife will appreciate this after some discussions we had when our kids were infants where I, before agreeing to play and hoodwink them with a secularized Santa, had floated the idea never trying to blow smoke up their arses with Santas, Tooth Fairies, malevolent supernatural demanding worship in return for a chance at dodging eternal torture, etc.

(That last we were in full agreement about not inflicting on them, by the way; there was never any question about that! We're mischievous, not cruel.)

You guys remember what a Glasgow Kiss is, yeah?

See also: Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives

Happy 50th Ian MacKaye

Ian MacKaye - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I know Frank Sinatra famously sang about how he did it his way, but did he really? If there's an American musician who's truly blazed his own trail, it's Mr. MacKaye. You can debate what "authenticity" means in the context of music ... to some extent everything is a remix ... I don't think you can dismiss this man (as a scold or a pedant), this music (as just noise, or "not punk"), or this ethos (as rigid, joyless) without losing something essential.





↬

IAN MACKAYE GRANDMA SEND IAN $50 CHECK FOR BIRTHDAY TODAY. IAN NOT ACCEPT ANYTHING MORE THAN $7.

— JADEDPUNKHULK (@JADEDPUNKHULK) April 16, 2012

Giant Bruce Lee statue is kickass.

Giant Bruce Lee statue welcomes kungfu fans: 

At 18.8 meters tall, the world's biggest Bruce Lee statue is ready to greet global kungfu lovers in the master's hometown in Jun'an town, Foshan in Guangdong province.

Had hopes of checking this out in person if I ever get to China again; but, I checked a map and it's a long way from Beijing.

ᔥ Tom Pappalardo