From 1996 until 2006, I sat in a small enclosed room each week and typed closed captioning and subtitles for thousands of television shows and home videos. As I worked, I would write down time codes where there were interesting images, and at the end of the day, since I often finished early, I would cue a frame and draw it in my sketchbook. Thus was born the zine Ticket Stub...
In 2006, the company downsized, and the entire editorial staff at our location was terminated during union contract negotiations; R.I.P. Ticket Stub.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Ticket Stub
Why Gary Panter is The Greatest
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Stacks
Whenever I visit someone's place I always enjoy browsing their bookshelves. My friend Phil just sent me a link to an odd website he just threw together. It's a massive stack of just pictures, piled high of he and his wive's bookshelves. Every book in the house: Dec. 11th, 2007. Fun to scroll through. I wish everyone would do this.
Phil Elverum and Geneviève Castrée are both (but individually) wonderful musicians and artists (aka The Microphones, Mount Eerie, Woelv). If you are not familiar with their work and are curious you can look at their other websites P.W. Elverum and Sun and Woelv.
The Revelation will be “Graphically Intensive”
His website has a gallery of paintings that imagine the Revelation, and they seem to come not from either a high art tradition of depicting key biblical scenes or a Hallmark "shimmering angels of light" style, but from van art of the '70s, as if William Blake airbrushed an old Econo-line . . . . (And those of you who have yet to get your comics this week should look at the current issue of Ghost Rider for art that looks a lot like these paintings. )
link to JVIM gallery
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Alvin, you should open up a window.
Back in September of 2005 I was commissioned to write a song for Alvin Buenaventura. I had placed an ad in one of my mini-comics advertising a custom song, for something like 7 or 8 dollars, and I had a few takers. (Tom K, I still owe you one! It's written but not recorded.)
I don't remember if Alvin requested a theme, or if I just choose to write about printmaking. It was fun to work on since it gave me an excuse to write about my own experiences in the print shop as a student at the Hartford Art School. I think all the references of that archaic world are universal, and so Alvin knew what I was talking about. Another satisfied customer I guess.
I always meant to go back in a re-dub the guitar which sounds really bland since I just plugged it direct into my computer, but I was happy with the keyboards in the end. It's funny, my piano skills are so poor that at certain points of the song you can literally hear me searching for the right notes, totally lost.
I recorded this on my computer using that program that comes built into Macs called Garage Band. I had never used it before so I got pretty carried away with the vocal pitch shifting and "Motown" drum samples. In the end the high pitched vocals have this really endearing digital lisp caused by the lo-fi point and click effects. Also, during long sustained notes the high vocal looses traction and wobbles like a front bicycle tire when you're going to slow. The deep vocal is just creepy, and the straight vocal track trails off with me trying to be Lou Reed without sounding like I'm trying to be Lou Reed. I think this was the last time I recorded any music.
The shop smells like orange peels, wax, and stacks of newsprint
Somebody should open up a window
Oak drawers filled with dusty lead melted into alphabet
Alvin you should open up a window
It takes thousands of pounds
it takes oil based ink
it takes a palette knife
it'll take an industrial sink
It takes years off your life
it'll take hours [spent] away from your wife
It takes flat files and spring loaded drying racks
it takes rags, sponges, and thumb-tacks
It takes exact-o knives
it takes friendly e-mail replies
it takes Paypal and artistic compromise… to print.
You can print.
TUT
This page was drawn for Kristine McKenna's book Talk to Her. McKenna's interviews are unique in that rather than ask someone about their new album she seems more likely to ask, "What happens when we die?" or some general quandary no one really has the answer to. Since I was assigned Tom Verlaine, I figured a contemporary point of reference might be John Holmstrom's Punk Magazine, especially his hand-lettered interviews with Lou Reed and David Johansen punctuated by cartoon panels and fumetti.
ALVIN!!!
When I was growing up, that uncommon name my parents assigned me invited endless, unwanted, hackneyed, tiresome taunts from children and adults alike. "Where's your brothers Simon and Theodore? he heh heh...." Yeah, charming, real clever. 9 out of 10 of people that I'd meet for the first time would immediately rattle that off, or even worse, sing the ditty. Annoying as that was it proved a reliable, instant douchebag detector. In any case what a crappy cartoon that was. Fucking falsetto warbling vermin, those chipmunks were the bane of my childhood. I hadn't thought of those guys much recently until the billboards started popping up everywhere, freakish! There's even one aroun d the corner, just a-block-and-a-half away from BP headquarters on the corner of Market and West Macarthur, above our beloved 'Easy Liquor' convenience store. Yesterday, on the way to the post office I decided to climb the beast. Yup there I am--if you look real close in the picture above, on the billboard, you can see the egomaniac jumping around (also note the woman with the pink coat entering the store, click on the photo for a larger view).
While up there I'm dancing around like a jackass posing for the camera and enjoying the view, man what a view! Down below a lady drives up, gets out of her car, and I see her exchange some words with Jordan and Beth (my conspirators.) She then calls up:
Woman in pink coat: "Hey Alvin"
Me: "Yeah?"
Woman in pink coat: "You just playin' right? ...I mean, if you gonna jump, wait 'til I'm gone."
She continued into the store.
When finished with her business, as she's exiting brown bag in hand, I'm awkwardly making my descent.
I hear her laughing and taunting.
Woman in pink coat: "Howda hell you get up there with all that junk in your trunk?! ...with that bubble butt? Ha!"
At least she didn't sing that damn song. Oh I love Oakland.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
VII: The Crypto Animadversion of Hercules
>
the dark gods of cronkite plunged the omniverse into peril. the holoswine lore of a necromancer, an obsidian sit-in, star grid of the gravity stilts, malfunctioning secretly soldered by doctor saturnine, the coordinates locked for damp, sopping dwelling under the spell of the sob pastors, the wrecked rectors. fried egg in the sky divide, twinkles shed in the shellac bear down cataclysms of an eyeglass hillwise, clasps and tousled, domino bed in stream. the vortext orb ancients quaking nebulas and the theban ion chamber, taint lords bequeathed, solar metadroids, microthetan mitosis of moons, the hexahedron craft patrol blood rite, web limbed interlopers of serpents who utter doom quandaries, tectonic ruptures, idol temple of tempests, cactus maps, thrones of thrombosis. the scroll prophecy foretold, swift as clovers and cauldrons in a fortnight, a reap of coroner crutches and tomb teats. over the spent suns of the molten armada in atomic broccoli, seas of carrion tell of the odin omens that succor. stone abominations, reptiles scuffling for amethysts, scimitars drawn.
>
jets of flushes spiriting the daubs through pipes, a vast lattice of slashes and hurls and curses all handled away, some metropolis of waste inside your gut, as well, such partings, a softer network. the gurglings and exchanges, here a continent of the incontinent. stools and squats at the head, movements, dear diarrhea. all the drips. here were hallways that bled floors of raging flagellates, polyps gripping archways, porticos writhing worms, fistulas. all coiled upon itself, a maze in your belly, some rope pretzelled there, tubing bundled, goo shooting through, lengths tagged by a spray canner, the gamble of craps, the dread of squirts, the mock of logs, the down of dumps. a monorail folded, a milieu of filth pipelines with a rust sheen, girders cupping the spaghetti, tangled lassoes in your lap, the intestine horizon, muck under the stomach, reciprocity of the city and the tummy, riddle of the mobile grout, bowels below. the thronesman locale TPed, pubic fountains, gush periods, gazebos of excreta, fecal streets, urinal principalities, johns in pee pee teepees, thoroughfares of droppings, promenades of poop decks, laying of cables, scaffolds of crap, shit bricks and doo hickeys.
>
in the era 9 after the metalunarian pickle wars the dungeon planet smore was the flashpoint for the taser fire of the hemoglobins. the manifesto of the portacoup: emergence of the piltdown metastasis, immediate mass flatulence, skyscraper as taffy, high rise as node of cosmic potlatch, form follows fallow. we are "for" an omniquorum. tarps transient, pillbox prefabs, motorized balconies, flying buttresses, buttresses that shamble, cantilevered dont's, neon tires, plazas cobbled from teeth and calculus, the use of odors as a tectonic moor, doors which under no circumstances could even be knocked, holograms of hydrants, quadrants of atoms, blocks and blocks of furnace igloo chimneys, tenements of enemas. in bots you eye on a scope, gas stairs, water walls, cloud floors, a moratorium on state subsidized breathing, smashing the tyranny of what has been falsely termed by the powers that be as "breathing," general lung strike. like tendrils and cranes, jackhammer mileage of ducts and wet piping, safe housing of silos, locks and dams gushing, swarms spreading the caulking over the darting, standing like spigots, a drain in the floor. azimuth, dragoon of the nordic trak, whose eel chalice of lamentation portends eclipse, whose 15-sided die rolls the mighty obviator, toadstool of the bog, talisman of incarnate fracture.
>
the dark gods of cronkite plunged the omniverse into peril. the holoswine lore of a necromancer, an obsidian sit-in, star grid of the gravity stilts, malfunctioning secretly soldered by doctor saturnine, the coordinates locked for damp, sopping dwelling under the spell of the sob pastors, the wrecked rectors. fried egg in the sky divide, twinkles shed in the shellac bear down cataclysms of an eyeglass hillwise, clasps and tousled, domino bed in stream. the vortext orb ancients quaking nebulas and the theban ion chamber, taint lords bequeathed, solar metadroids, microthetan mitosis of moons, the hexahedron craft patrol blood rite, web limbed interlopers of serpents who utter doom quandaries, tectonic ruptures, idol temple of tempests, cactus maps, thrones of thrombosis. the scroll prophecy foretold, swift as clovers and cauldrons in a fortnight, a reap of coroner crutches and tomb teats. over the spent suns of the molten armada in atomic broccoli, seas of carrion tell of the odin omens that succor. stone abominations, reptiles scuffling for amethysts, scimitars drawn.
>
jets of flushes spiriting the daubs through pipes, a vast lattice of slashes and hurls and curses all handled away, some metropolis of waste inside your gut, as well, such partings, a softer network. the gurglings and exchanges, here a continent of the incontinent. stools and squats at the head, movements, dear diarrhea. all the drips. here were hallways that bled floors of raging flagellates, polyps gripping archways, porticos writhing worms, fistulas. all coiled upon itself, a maze in your belly, some rope pretzelled there, tubing bundled, goo shooting through, lengths tagged by a spray canner, the gamble of craps, the dread of squirts, the mock of logs, the down of dumps. a monorail folded, a milieu of filth pipelines with a rust sheen, girders cupping the spaghetti, tangled lassoes in your lap, the intestine horizon, muck under the stomach, reciprocity of the city and the tummy, riddle of the mobile grout, bowels below. the thronesman locale TPed, pubic fountains, gush periods, gazebos of excreta, fecal streets, urinal principalities, johns in pee pee teepees, thoroughfares of droppings, promenades of poop decks, laying of cables, scaffolds of crap, shit bricks and doo hickeys.
>
Monday, December 10, 2007
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Pete Morisi
A revised version of what was here is now here:
http://www.tcj.com/dont-move-the-still-life-of-pete-morisi/
Obsolete Repository: Trash Cans
When I was ten years old, I created the nationally syndicated comic strip Trash Cans. Readers immediately took to the heartwarming exploits of these metal mirthmakers. A nation mourned when days later I announced my retirement...
Saturday, December 8, 2007
The River of Failure
Friday, December 7, 2007
1000 Frames of Hitchcock.
Tippi Hedren, photographed by Robert Burks.
Ingrid Bergman, photographed by Robert Burks.Random out of context sampling…
Eustance Tilly (Lifeboat), photographed by Glen MacWilliams.
Frenzy, photographed by Gilbert Taylor & Leonard J. South.
The Ring, photographed by Jack E. Cox.
Shadow of a Doubt, photographed by Joseph A. Valentine.
To Catch A Theif, photographed by Robert Burks.
The Lodger, photographed by Gaetano di Venimiglia.
North By Northwest, photographed by Robert Burks.
Note: The boy-extra in the blue shirt, plugging his ears in anticipation of a gun shot after many takes of the same scene.
I love this shot. I'm surprised that it made it into the film actually. Relying on a tiny orange spot to make a point on the big screen in 1954 was pretty risky considering how many random spots and specs find their way onto any film with regular use. Oh, but it's such a great idea.
Rear Window, photographed by Robert Burks.
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