August 2007

I put up things on the web because nobody else has. As time goes on more and more of what I considered to be highly obscure, highly ephemeral objects make it to the web. This is a wonderful thing that delights me.

It tends to destroy the whole notion of scarcity in terms of objects of media. TV shows, songs, videos, movies. All, persistently available via electronic download. It used to be one had to make pilgrimages to large cities and their array of record stores, book stores, and newsstands to learn about new obscura. Perhaps you’d hear something on the radio and not hear the artist or name of the song and that sound might get trapped in your head for a long time. It never escapes because there was no way to look up what the heck that was. Now we have Google and its full-text search engine—and as long as you can recall a bit of a lyric, you can find what you seek.

So herewith are some highly obscure tracks from my own vaults of taste, now quite findable using YouTube. It’s not even that they’re that old, just that they’re not what has survived to play on “Rock of the 80s” or “Rock of the 90s” stations.

Wolfgang Press: Kansas

Eat: Mr. and Mrs. Smack

Ween: Freedom of ‘76

Pavement: Cut Your Hair

...taken by leah.

(where we sometimes go a week without posting!)

Just a bit of Leah’s latest project—realmental.org:

leahpeah : Blog Archive » RealMental.org
RealMental.org is a home of sorts. It’s a place where everyone is welcome who wishes to explore what it means to have a mental disorder, be in a relationship with someone who has a mental disorder and all the other things that go along with that including medication, depression and self-help techniques. My greatest hope is to break down barriers and remove the stigma attached to the words Mental Illness, because they are just words. And it’s real people living those things and trying to cope with those things and it’s hard and they and I just want others to understand and not judge.

Acres of Books may be the “world’s largest used bookstore.”

As such, I think I want to go there.

I read about it on Mark Evanier’s blog:

I haven’t set foot in the place for twenty years but I bet it hasn’t changed much. I’m talking about Acres of Books, which is located in Long Beach, California and which is usually acknowledged as the largest second-hand bookstore in the world. It’s a huge place that almost seems to live up to its name. Back when I was buying old books, I often spent an entire afternoon in its aisles…which is what you kind of have to do if you even set foot in the place. You don’t just pop in for a quick check of a few shelves. I’ve known people to plan visits like one plans a vacation, including lunch at a pre-selected nearby establishment.

He goes on to say he visits used bookstores less because of internet retailers and places like Amazon. But I have a severe soft spot for real stores.

Today I have nothing particularly on my mind, only things miscellaneous.

Variously some nouns that are swirling around: deadline, William Gibson, ruthlessness, trash can, dish, invoice, milk, gasoline, PayPal, telephone.

Apropos of that nonlinear list, here’s a pixel drawing from approximately 20 years ago!

It’s been several weeks since I updated here about my Mom.

Several weeks ago I visited my family in Virginia, primarily to see my Mom, who recently had a stroke and was subsequently diagnosed with Stage IV Renal (Kidney) Cell Carcinoma, Cancer. She also has metastases to her brain, lung and mediastinum.

I had a great time, despite the somewhat grave circumstances. I have come into contact with several people with cancers of various kinds in the past few years, and so far they’re all still around. Frankly the diagnosis my Mom got is quite a severe one, but the predictions as to prognosis are not set in stone. There’s data that she could go years, after all, the first symptom she had was the stroke. She’s in otherwise great shape, no smoking, good fitness, walks stronger than I can, as evidenced above. She is doing great.

She was started with CyberKnife, mentioned before, and now, the current regimen is every Friday she gets chemotherapy—Torisel, to keep the cancer at bay, or even to get at diminishing the cancer. Cancer is now thought of as a chronic disease, and it’s managed as such. So far, so good, she’s getting back to “normalcy” as much as that is possible. The chemotherapy does create some fatigue for her, but while I was there she felt pretty good. Good appetite, good energy mostly. Here’s a photo of her getting chemo:

My Dad has been 1000% supportive of everything she needs, and got housekeepers to help take some of the load off of my Mom in terms of the house. He’s a good man.

My sister and her fiancee have likewise been ultra-supportive. My Sister lives four hours away and comes down whenever she can. She was critical in the first stages of my Mom’s hospitalization, helping out at home and keeping the extended family in the loop.

And my Mom has friends, holy cow does she have friends! I was taking several calls a day, and I wasn’t even answering them all. People dropping by, dropping off flowers to say “hi,” stopping in.

So there’s lots of hope in the realm of my Mom’s illness. I try and keep in touch with email and iChats periodically. I miss them all, but everything seems to be going about as well as it could. There’s a great deal of hope, though any spare prayers you have are appreciated.

From a few months ago. Cell phone cam.

Half an hour ago there was an earthquake – 4.5 on the Richter Scale. More info here: Info is here or here. Keep up to date at Recent Earthquakes in California and Nevada.

Kind of exciting. Felt all over Los Angeles, and centered in Chatsworth, so say the sources.

I’ve started reading many more blogs about drawing, illustration, animation, and comics, and I have to mention an artist who quite impressed me, and who I had never heard of. Over at lines and colors, Charley Parker posted about him the other day and it wowed me:

lines and colors: A Little Bit of Leyendecker Greatness
For the benefit of the uninitiated, Joseph Christian Leyendecker was one of the all time greatest illustrators. He is also one of my personal favorites. In my original post about him I tried to convey how flabbergasted I was, and continued to be, at how relatively unknown he remains; particularly when compared to Norman Rockwell, who followed Leyendecker into the role of main cover illustrator for the Post, considered Leyendecker a major influence and a friend, and receives credit that I think belongs to Leyendecker for setting the high-bar on American magazine illustration.

Yes indeed. I suppose because he followed Norman Rockwell he doesn’t get the kind of notoriety Rockwell gets. But clearly he was a talented illustrator. When I was a kid and teenager I dug Norman Rockwell. I dug Warhol too, and Jackson Pollock too, but a good illustrator, despite their subject matter being prosaic can say a great deal. Here’s a detail from a posting to the Leyendecker blog Parker mentions.

This was in 1933, the depths of the depression. You can see the NRA symbol right on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. It’s a New Year’s Theme, a wish allegory for a recovery on Wall Street in 1934. I’m not sure why his work hits me, I think it’s a combination of draughtsmanship and showmanship. He revels in these illustrations. They’re fun and detailed and bursting with energy. I’m happy I found them.

For Father’s Day this year I received a set of really nice pens to draw with.

Time’s always the thing, no? Perhaps I’ll find some.