Hiatus: Nobody is home

Gone for a bit...

He's Gone

(Updated below, Update II)
He struck fear in other men at the prospect of being photographed with him; the inevitable implication was that he would be in a dominant position, suspended in air like a demi-God, in a display of savage grace. He was a living icon, an inspiration to millions, the face of an era spanning two decades. When he was on top of his game, there was no one like him. His moves and finesse were other-worldly, he bent the laws of gravity to his liking.

I’ve been reading the news for the last couple of day and I can’t believe it. Say whatever you want about his personal life, and the pressures of fame and fortune is something none of us will experience, but he was probably the greatest basketball player of all time and we won’t see another like him. I still can’t believe Michael Jordan is gone, RIP. I’ll be reading the news , obits and watching Youtube clips for the next couple of days, so count me out of commission as I mourn humanity’s loss. Damn, Airness, 23, MJ, we hardly knew ye. May you forever be dunking on John Stockton in heaven.

Update: A reader writes in,

Hi,
Long time reader, don't have time to comment usually but love the blahg. I wrote in to let you know that you are mistaken on this one. I know because have been friends with Michael Jordan for a number of years, in fact we just finished a two hour run at the Bellagio craps table and are heading to the champagne room. I don't know who died, but I assure you that Jordan is alive and kicking. yours,

C. Oakley
P.S. could you write more posts about South-Latin America? We don't hear much from down there except when [Venezuelan President] Hugo Chavez has an impromptu book promotion.

Thanks for the letter, Mr. Oakley. We don't usually take requests here at Americana, but I'll tell you what - if I am wrong about this then I'll write something about America's back yard. After all, old Uncle has had as many fingers in that pie as the Middle Eastern pie. I have a 7000 word post about Iran in the works that I need to finish, but after that, then maybe. (And if you thought Sarah Palin was a minx, wait until you see Cristina Kirchner, hubba-hubba!) First I need to find out more information on MJ.

Update II: Mea Culpa! We blew it, folks! I just got a statement from Michael Jordan's press agent confirming that he is alive. She declined to comment on his Airness's gambling habits. This is almost as embarassing as the 2500 word Ronald McDonald obit I posted when Reagan kicked it a few years ago.

In my defense, I have been embroiled in a weeks long email argument with a die-hard Lakers friend from Los Angeles who keeps insisting Kobe Bryant has surpassed Jordan. And I know I am not the only person who thinks all of Those People look alike.

Scrappers: revisited

40"x48"

Oil on canvas

The original Scrappers.

Some supplemental reading to add context for this piece.

Tonally, this is a bit of a mess. However, I am much happier with the clothing, the feeling I get from the overgrown vines and crumbling structures are closer to the mark. I may come back to this in a few months, once again, but as for now I am ok with moving on to the next redux.

Bizarro World

I use that word — insanity — advisedly. In “The Origins of Totalitarianism” and “On Revolution,” Arendt deciphered the way autocratic regimes, and the people under them lose touch with reality. Everything becomes suspicion. Conspiracy theories fester. No one can trust one another. Words lose their meanings.

David Brooks, New York Times conversation

How unlike free societies such as ours, where people are exceptionally in touch with reality, conspiracy theories are virtually unheard of, a deep sense of community exists, and words are never used to obfuscate the truth. How strange it must be to live in an autocratic society.

I am no expert on Iranian politics, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night

Imagine that in the past week or so I had written 7 posts about the Iranian protests wherein…
7 took longer than an hour to write, and 3 took longer than 4 hours.
2 contained long-winded summaries of U.S. – British- Iranian geopolitical history beginning with Mossadegh to the present day (the rest referenced these two)
1 diverged into a irrelevant speculation about how President McCain or Emperor Bush is handling the situation in an alternate reality
2 contained chauvinistic and crass comments about the author’s appreciation for the beauty of Persian women.
6 used at least one poorly thought out metaphor, including one inexplicable baseball metaphor.
6 excerpted or criticized mainstream opinion makers for their take
3 registered disdain, 6 sarcasm, 3 bad humor, 4 hope, and 2 praise.
4 contained long excerpts from media reports or other opinion makers, with added comments/criticism/thoughts of varying degrees of banality.
3 contained personal anecdotes including one with a shoot from the hip, conservative cab-driver, an Iranian gambler the author met at a Vegas casino and a classmate the author remembers from college who might have been from Iran.
5 had updates and corrections.
And none gave you something that you can’t find somewhere else.

Now we are all caught up and can rest easy until the next major news story begins its tilt-a-whirl tour through our media.

I know what you are thinking, where are the updates from your supposed artistic rebuilding? Well, there are no updates yet, and I am not giving any sneak previews. Please have patience. Show some self-control for crying out loud, you are an embarassment. I am in the process of destroying Scrappers, simultaneously making it more compelling and diluting the message with “flight of fancy, wonder if I can pull this off,” imagery and will post soon once completed. I have divined at least two workable ideas for new compositions while scrapping Scrappers. Art begets art. Nonetheless, I am almost embarrassed to have put Scrappers out there as a painting considering how raw and bare that piece was. I lose perspective when I am in the middle of a painting, once I step away for awhile I begin to appreciate how truly awful some pieces look. Yeesh.

The Revolution may or may not be online!

So over at Charting Stocks, some guy posted this. I am not familiar with the individual, his politics, or whatever. I am too lazy to really research that and will simply take the facts in his post at face value, but not his editorial slant.

I think some of his points are a bit too conclusive, for example I don't find the timing of the account creation all that suspicious. It could make sense for people to use these tools as means of communication in response to the protests, lock down of other means of communication, etc. The timing of the JPost article is a little weird, but whatever.

I scanned the comments and some of the criticisms of the original post were as idiotic as some of the arguments found in these parts. For example, many asked if he thought Mossad also created photos too, as if the post had called into question the depicted reality of what is going on in Iran rather than the much narrower inquiry into the legitimacy of a few twitter feeds. (Similarly to how I think it is a safe bet a lot of pro-war blogs for Iraq were run by western intelligence agencies, who have a well documented history of planting stories in the press during the Cold War.)

But that doesn't concern me. If these twitter feeds are phony, I believe it is the Twitter folks themselves who are spoofing these protests to boost the visibility of their software. I hate Twitter. Make no mistake, my friends, Twitter is the next evolutionary step in online narcissism. The point of this is one, to register my disdain for Twitter, and two, to remind all of us how incomplete our knowledge of the world is, even those events that are seemingly dissected from every angle and recieve the most attention. Another example, check out the recent work on the Columbine Massacre. Basically, everything that the media reported about those two young sociopaths in real time was wrong. And that was an event that happened here in the states and attracted the attention of every major news organization in the country.

Here are a few nuggets that caught my attention in the past week, reproduced without comment.

Secret papers 'show how Shell targeted Nigeria oil protests'

Health insurers refuse to limit rescission of coverage

U.N. says Colombian army killed innocent civilians

Michael Klare, Goodbye to Cheap Oil

Have a good weekend, be safe.

Rabbit, It's time to dig another one

I am in the process of tearing down and rebuilding my understanding and technical handling of color theory. The modeling of 3 dimensional objects and coloring of objects is a major weakness, tinkering is insufficient and completely retraining how I handle the paint before it ever goes up. My problems are not for lack of understanding color mixing, hue, intensity or tone, or complements, it is the application where all falls down. Reached the end of the line with current palette techniques and need a more scientific approach. The new methods feel awkward because they are new, but once they become subliminal I am confident the overall product will improve - starting to see an emergent style.

To this end, I am in the process of reworking several existing pieces posted previously, using these once thought to be completed works to rebuild my technical skill. The one rule of traditional design that I have no use for at this point is that a painting should have a single point of interest and maybe one or two secondary points. Right now I want to create imagery that draws your eye all around the canvas and invites you in to observer various details and mini-scenes within the larger panorama. I’ve heard comments that it can be distracting and overwrought to throw so much up there. That is probably valid to a degree, but I am doing what I feel needs doing for now. Having said that, I stick to the by the book rules sometimes (the recent cover art series, for example).

There is an update the martyrs painting. I reworked the painter and pots. The last thing that needs revision is the large figure on the beach pouring sand down his back. I will come back to that after working on some of the other paintings, and hopefully v3.5 will be the final release. The inspiration for martyrs came from my brother, and the initial vision changed quite a bit during execution. The general point is to examine art, craftsmanship, aesthetics and utility in a world of mass produced consumer goods. It is an open ended question rather than a statement.
Its hard living in an apartment filled with disappointing art made by your own hand. The canvases are all leaned together in my bedroom against the wall, they are the first thing I wake up to and last thing I see every day. Time to do something about this, so I went through my catalog with a notebook and pen, made some critiques and decided the following pieces need these revisions. Here is what I came up with and hold myself accountable for.
· Scrappers (to do first, several line items are already in process)
o Concrete bunkers should be crumbling and decayed; more texture, pock marks, cracks, crumbling form could break up the blocks and help loosen composition.
o Some touchup is in order for sky.
o The door needs complete rework
o Add overgrown vegetation, vines, gnarled roots to give heighten the impression of neglect and disrepair.
o Buildings to the left re-colored and tightened up to draw the eye in a bit more.
o Clothing on both figures needs complete rework
o Spectacled man’s right arm should make an appearance somewhere instead of held behind his body, looks awkward.
o Metal scrap needs complete re-vamp, flat and dimensionless
· M.O.A.B.
o Photorealism for the leather boots is in order; apart from that I can live with it.
· Mr. Fix-It
o Complete rework on background color mix
o Better modeling for the clothing
o Metal gears need better highlights and general coloring.
· Turbulence
o The forearms should be re-painted, not entirely happy with everything else but can live with it.
· God, Flag, Country
o The blue mix needs greater depth, too flat and painted on currently.
o Play with float away stars on the surface of the water in the upper mid-right to better imply the American Flag.
Let me wrap this up with a display of gratitude for anyone who makes comments/critiques my work. I appreciate it, probably more than I should. Another big weakness that needs work in the future (tackling one issue at a time) is insecurity with respect to showing my art.

The "dodged a bullet" dodge

I have read numerous comments thanking the polity for the November decision in the context of discussing the protests in Iran. A quick recap - Many analysts and observors laud Obama’s hands-off approach to the protestors under the reasonable assumption that giving open support to the protests will enable the ruling elite to marginalize and suppress the protestors. McCain criticized Obama’s muted response, saying that the U.S. should openly support the protestors. Many have pointed out the predictable results of that tack, namely a lot of feel good tough guy posturing here and more blood spilled abroad. Speculate how our government would respond to a protest movement that was singled out and endorsed by Iranian Super-villain Ahmadinejad for an analog. A lot of people are breathing sighs of relief at this, whew, thank goodness Mad dog McCain isn’t in office right now! (Google “Mccain iran dodged bullet” for examples).

The problem is that this is an argument from speculation and hypothetical, something one may consider a liberal specialty. Prior examples include: "Thanks, Ralph." “You really think we’d be in Iraq if Gore had won? Come ON!” Speculate on a past event and argue about the present circumstances on that set of circumstances. If anyone disagrees or calls this a fixed game, get indignant with a come on. A related set of arguments that project into the future are especially frustrating with respect to international politics – “what if we could take such and such an action without incurring a lot of collateral damage? I know it may be impossible, but assuming we could, let’s make an argument for why it would be a noble mission…” Eventually the impossibility is muted and you are left with the noble mission and –stifle your laughter - blundering efforts to do good. I hope you follow me here.

The “thank heavens McCain isn’t president” hypothetical is particularly galling because up until now we have had a president Obama who has largely continued upon and expanded his predecessors much reviled policies with respect to war, surveillance , state secrecy, torture, detention and corporate hand outs. He has walked back or completely spun around on many of the important issues of the most historic presidential campaign in generations, as many predicted. His statements in that reality, the one where he courted a particular electoral sensibility in order to become president, were often at complete odds with his actions in the present reality, where he is president. Why should we assume campaign McCain, or non-president McCain today, would behave exactly as President McCain would? Does it matter? And in the larger scope of things, if McCain would have been different on Iran but largely the same on everything else listed above, is that really a big deal? (I mean, besides to the Iranian protestors). This is such a marginal difference, indulging in that fantasy is a way to prop up the illusion that our system isn’t as closed as it is, that public opinion matters, and so on. It’s bullshit. After all, do we not have a bright shining example right in front of us that demonstrates how little political campaign rhetoric and mannerisms reflect upon actual policies once the candidate is in power? Of course non-President McCain is going to say something to criticize the president’s reaction; it’s the nature of our politics. Don’t take his statements past or present for how he would behave as president, similarly to just about everything Obama has done while in office runs contrary to things he did outside of the white house.

There is something sad about clinging to this scrap of nothing to keep hope alive for the lesser of two evils dynamic in our electoral politics.

Audience Participation

Results below!
OK, I have in mind two options. Option one is a somewhat sorry survey of the Obama Administration's sterling but brief record in regards to our wars, surveillance state, detention policies, attempts to keep the public in the dark about government actions, etc. This would of course only be a means to set the table for a quick review of his supporters reactions, which basically range from the genuinely pitiful "I was fooled!", to the fantasy-laden "imagine how much worse McCain would be!", and saddest of all, "this is all OK because I know he has good intentions unlike the previous dick." The review would be at once mocking, sad, angry and resigned. Option two is a summary and some quick reactions to a local piece of journalism, namely a profile in the "SF Weekly" about a transgendered man who strips naked in bars and reads his poem about a traumatic experience as a sex worker to onlookers. Send a text message to the official phone number for this blog - 1 for option one, 2 for option two, and 3 to abstain. Vote Now!

Update:
Sex wins by a nose over Obamockery!

Let me recap the story of Michael Gray*(not his real name), born Stephanie Gray(not her real name). Michael Gray*(not his real name) lived for 20 years as a woman before coming the realization that she was really born a gay man and proceeded to change genders. She got her breasts removed and took male hormones, but opted not to change genitalia. The result is what the article calls an elfin, androgynous gay man with a vagina.

Later, Michael Gray*(not his real name)began working as a sex worker via personal ads. While working for an HIV positive client, Michael Gray*(not his real name)was raped after extensive consenting foreplay - in other words, consent stopped at penetration, which makes sense. To be sure, this must have been a horrifying and traumatic experience. Luckily, Michael Gray*(not his real name) did not get infected. He now retells this experience, reading from sheets of paper and standing stark naked, to bar audiences. Sometimes he reads at organized "performance art" shows, but some times he wanders into a place and gets permission from the bartender, quickly disrobes in front of a perplexed audience and begins reading.

My take is this - I have no idea how hard it would be to change genders, how hard that would be for you, your family, those who have known you for so long. The psychological issues that would be involved, I am glad I don't know and wish all the best in the world for those who have to deal with that. Sexuality is a much more difficult topic for some people to deal with and for whatever reasons, many feel that this is a vastly interesting topic to discuss amongst ourselves. I don't know or care much, it isn't that I am prude, feel uncomortable, or disgusted - I just think of it as something we all do and I don't care about anyone else's experiences. I'd react similarly if anyone discussed their sleeping patterns with me. I might talk for a bit to have something to discuss, but I am not going to watch you perform by crawling into bed and dozing off onstage and call you an artist. Others disagree, and that is fine.

In fact, the only part of the article that I took offense too - and this made me smile and is partly why I wanted to say something in this space - was a tossed off remark about the act that followed Michael Gray*(not his real name) at the performance art show; a tall black "artist" who did unspeakable things with a corn cob. This ticked me off, to describe this kind of thing as "art." As someone who should really not have pretensions and act uppity towards what qualifies as "art", I certainly have all of that. Maybe because art matters so much to me. Now I've looked it at the possibility that I am a thin skinned maniac about this, and ultimately determined it to be too implausible to merit serious consideration. I'd like to make clear that I didn't write an outraged letter to the editor, just chuckled at myself that this was what touched me the most about the beyond bizarre article detailing things that I will never see or understand in a hundred years.

I have a problem with what we consider art in this modern age. When you strip naked and cornhole yourself on-stage, is that art? Is art that hard to define, or that open to interpretation? One aspect to art that has been grossly overplayed in the past 100 years is the elevation of innovation and shock value over craftsmanship, message, and skill. To be fair, many artists have attempted to push the medium and media they work in, but have done so with skill and craftsmanship.

Now this is just one man's poorly formed opinion and I'd love to hear counter arguments, but I differentiate badly made art (a personal specialty) or avante garde art from junk. It can be tough, especially with respect to modern art, which is who I blame for the sheer amount of crap that gets let in the door these days - namely ridiculous fashion statements, a lack of any shame or humility and the wherewithal to put that on display in public fall outside of that. Since I have not bothered to lay down any guidelines here other than to say that some things are and some things are not art, let me go ahead with examples.

Example 1 - Art
Example 2 - Art
(Note to this point that both examples are artists who work in non-traditional media and push up against what many consider to have artistic merit.)
I don't have a link to video of me walking down the street wearing a fannie pack with a flower coming out of it, a bath robe and adult diaper, but if I did imagine that I posted it here. - Not art.

The modern art movement has really pushed art in this direction where people mistakenly look at their work and interpret some of its raw, stripped down imagery as something so simple they can do and therefore must be art. Julian Schnabel painstakingly glues broken shards to canvas and any yahoo thinks that they can videotape themselves throwing beer bottles against the wall, or video taping a plastic bag blowing in the wind to reference a certain movie, and call these things art.

Friendly Advice

Everyone you meet will be hauling a heavy load, some almost more than they can bear. A good rule of thumb is to not add to the weight of their load unless you have good reason too. My definition of good reasons starts and stops at attacks or threats on my person or others.