True Love

Fairy X-Rays

Painted just in time for Halloween!

Float On

New summer painting.

Deep Water, Deep Water.

Directed by Heath Ledger, Modest Mouse's "King Rat" video is just the kind of pointy grin that Brock's septet does best.

King Rat - by Heath Ledger!
Uploaded by HatakTRAILERS. - Watch more music videos, in HD!

An Adolescent's School Experience Set To Music That WON'T Make You Sick and Kill You

Hey humorists and anglophiles! Come and wrap yourself in both idiocy and comic genius with an original, 100% cotton homage to the Ricky Gervais Podcast and its beloved orange-headed twat.

Thanks to like-minded collaborator Darren Buss for his excellent design, and the bright idea to gather our ensuing screen-printed antics in one place.

Feeling Wound Up?

Your tinkering ticker:

Larger view here.

Via the eluardian indulgers at Boot Strapped, have yourself a look at the photo gallery from an evening face-to-face with the phantasmagorical. As far as art shows go, I found that Carr Winery is an excellent venue in which to drag your patrons down a rabbit hole. Goodbye, Dinah!

Bonnaroo Trip Diary

Ready? Here it go:

6/8
The Bonnaroo trip is off to something of a rocky start. The morning of departure finds us unable to leave on time because that Jeff guy missed his connecting flight back to Santa Barbara, and then Nathan forgot his ticket. Traveling in a group this size is like herding cats. We finally arrive at the Los Angeles outpost where the RV and our home for the foreseeable future is. We get it tetris-packed and shove off. It’s the vagabond life now! Night falls. We stop at a gas station where a kid is playing with the contents of a tip jar on the floor. We stop at another gas station and I brush my teeth in the sink.

What I found out pretty quickly is this: it is nigh impossible to sleep in a moving RV, unless you are accustomed to traveling by elephant palanquin, or maybe sedan chair. All of a sudden it’s morning, and I drive us into Texas with some trepidation. I’m still wearing the same ratty Belle & Sebastian shirt from yesterday. We halt at a flying J truck stop, which is becoming a regular thing. It’s the biggest one I’ve seen, Texas is not messing around. Typical! I’m feeling salty and sleepless, so instead of washing in the RV, I barge right into the truck stop's shower area to figure out how it works and get myself a proper wash. Caricatures of truckers stare like cattle as I struggle to deadbolt the door, excited to stand under the hot water forever. The state lines roll by, and midnight that night finds us at a Sonic in Arkansas, where Garet’s manic friend Danny shamelessly hits on the 16-year-old who brings us our order of road food. She has twang speech and a sweet, desperate disposition; a real-life Libby Mae Brown. It gets hilarious and sad when Danny jokes (?) that she should quit her job and run away to Bonnaroo with us California folk; and she says yes. Awkwardness in the Ozarks! Was Sonic deliciousness worth it??

6/10
We stagger into another truck stop at around 6 a.m. and crash. We haven’t stopped for longer than an hour yet, so the vehicle's stillness is bizarre. It’s Tennessee around us now, close to our destination and perfectly delirious. We all catch a few hours of sleep, and then accost the truck stop’s showers. We’re pros at it now.

{rock: hard place}

Only an hour to the campsite! Garet can't get over the wooded scenery particular to this part of the country, especially since last night's drive had the cinematic element of being all heat lightning and fireflies. I prefer looking at it from an interior however, because the weather just feels like the inside of a mouth. We keep driving, almost there. I’m innocently observing the local deciduous offerings from the passenger seat, when Garet calmly says that we’re being pulled over. As all of our party is both sober and freshly showered (no mean feat, that), we aren’t very worried. This changes immediately when the officer asks to have a word with Garet behind the RV. All of us snap to attention, and spend the next 15 minutes trying to eavesdrop surreptitiously. Apparently, the police here are just fabricating reasons to pull out-of-state RVs over, as they are usually the ones carrying interest-causing amounts of drugs into Bonnaroo. One could hardly consider a couple of personal stashes of greens interest-causing, but this is the south y’all; and ten minutes later, a drawling cop has us all perspiring freely on the sweltering highway shoulder while two canine units arrive and search our entire vehicle; probable cause be damned. The dog goes mad barking, and I can’t do a thing except stand there, panicking silently, getting sunburnt, and wondering how much this backwoods unit is intending to knock the tail light out of our good time. The search takes about an hour, and we have a surprisingly pleasant chat with one of the officers not dismantling our vehicle. He laughs at our jokes and talks easily with us about Bonnaroo. Y'all from around here? Y'all ever been to this festival before? He tells us we are lucky that it was this narcotics unit that pulled us over, and not the highway patrol, who are “assholes”. Huh. He notices my slowly crisping dermis, and offers me shelter in the form of the back of his squad car. This offer seems to be genuinely rooted in southern gentlemanlyness, but there’s something about taking a break in the back of a police vehicle that is unappealing to me. The cops turn out to be fairly reasonable, and we miraculously escape without citation or worse. It was sort of like we were boring them, in the end.

We enter Manchester, TN early in the evening. It’s a small and redneck mecca. Apparently, Wal-mart has this policy where you can park in any of its lots overnight when traveling. This has not escaped the notice of the Bonnaroo bound; we find out within seconds of alighting that there is a "Wal-mart party" going on at the local supercenter, and that it's an annual thing. Elegant, right? We’re going. We arrive to find an utter shantytown of cars, RVs, and music enthusiasts stocking up on Walmart's 24-hour offerings, and clustering around their vehicles playing various drinking games. The purpose of this campout seems to be to start things off with a hicktastic bang, and to provide a point of departure for getting in line to enter the farm early tomorrow. And to expedite the complete elimination of social boundaries. Within thirty minutes of setting up the beer pong table, we've amassed a motley crew of the type of people you meet at these things. A girl from Oregon descends upon us and beats Nathan at beer pong lickety-split. She's made as far as a trek as we have, with two friends in tow in her tiny Honda civic. One of them shows up at around 2 a.m., a tall, skinny 20-year-old in a plaid shirt who rolls everyone cigarettes upon his arrival. Everyone is starting to look attractive. This is definitely the first time I have ever thought that in a Wal-Mart parking lot.

6/11
I wake up and we’re moving, which means I must have fallen asleep. It's raining, and the drops sound like ping pong balls on the roof. We get into the campground which is a sea of grass clumps and mud that slowly turns into a city of tarps and motor homes.

It’s about a 15-minute walk from our part of the campsite orbit to Centeroo, which is where all the attractions are. People recover from their Wal-mart hangovers, get drunk again, and we head in at around 5 in the evening. I see Portugal, The Man; Chairlift; and Passion Pit in close succession. Garet leaves halfway through Portugal's set because the decibel level hurts his ears, and it’s starting to rain. Harold and Nela disappear to one of the other stages. I walk happily by myself through an increasingly torrential thunderstorm, and enjoy the next two sets (particularly Passion Pit) thoroughly. They are enthusiastic live, although the levels are somewhat hazy. This doesn’t end up mattering much to the audience, which is going delightfully crazy. Harold and Nela reappear, and then Garet arrives for the last few songs. He’s been listening to radio Bonnaroo and worrying about our camp because there’s a tornado warning out; apparently the purple lightning and pouring rain aren’t just a spectacular show.

{eep}

Apart from a few tents blowing about, nothing really happens, and most of the participants don’t bat an eye; just splash through the mud to the next show, in less than half light. We meet up with my beloved cousin Chris and his girlfriend at around 1 a.m.; though it's hard to find anyone in this nighttime watercolor painting. Especially if you're looking for a skinny guy with stylish glasses at Bonnaroo. We walk back after this, and Nela and I wash in the pouring rain with the sun shower (hah). It was freezing and very thorough. We were in full view of the RV behind ours, and during the flashes of lightning we could see them laughing at us. It was the cleanest I’ve felt yet.

6/12
I wake up confused from the first real unconscious sleep I have had on this trip. We all make waffles and spend the morning talking to the parade of oddities around our campsite. After noon passes, sets begin; so we make the sweltering trek into Centeroo, drinking Pabst along the way. The organization of this festival is not only utterly lasseiz-faire, but surprisingly green as well.

{the dump truck is telling you}

Upon entering Centeroo, the first thing you see is a water station that pumps free, cool drinking water for anyone who has bothered to bring an empty bottle. In this way, the festival avoids having to sell bottled water, and the endless litter that goes with it. And no one dies of thirst! Similarly, recycling and composting bins are available everywhere you turn. And unlike other music festivals (AHEM, Coachella) you are free to come and go from Centeroo to your campsite as you please. Which is ideal when you start to get hungry, tired, or too sober. Although people are searched as they enter Centeroo, it seems to be a complete farce and formality. More than once I obediently held my bag out, only to have the guy in a yellow polo shirt pat it once with a bored look, and wave me inside. It makes me think I should be laden with more illicit items, since apparently you can be. We head straight to the Which stage and and see Animal Collective. The stage names are a titter at first, but the joke wears off fairly quickly when monikers like “This Tent”, “That Tent”, The Other Tent”, “Which Stage” and “What Stage” make actual locations difficult to convey. I am slated to hear about a million "Who's On First?" jokes this week. Anyway, the set is rrl great, and I end up watching the drummer the whole time. The heat is terrifically blistering. Social morays have dissolved into a complete stew of humanity; mud-splattered, sunburnt hipsters are iced in sweat and wear fewer clothes every day. Nathan is dancing around like a banshee, and our group floats over to This Tent to catch Grizzly Bear’s incredible show. The combination of extreme heat, substances, and the general fascinating parade of characters has steeped me in a delirium that is becoming something of an overtaking spiritual experience.

{hipster skin}

We go back to camp to take a break before the night set. I shower, but put the same clothes back on, as my brain is too beleaguered to do anything else. Under Nathan’s Tutelage of Imbibing, we all sit drinking until midnight, and then thunder into Centeroo for the late sets. Paul Oakenfold and Girl Talk are both scheduled to provide a faintly hallucinatory performance at 2 a.m., and some kids from the Wal-mart party keep texting us to meet them, but we do not manage to do this. I buy a ridiculous pair of earrings from a taciturn guy in a dashiki. Half the people we see appear to be under some serious influences; skinny boys hug their knees in the mud under the art installations, and girls in various states of undress pet each other's faces.

{gazebo for the not-all-there}

At Paul Oakenfold, glowsticks fall like an apocalyptic rain. They are complimentary, as well as flimsy and thin so as not to hurt the crowd that they are showering. We fill our hair and pockets with them, and then walk over to embrace the absurdity that is the silent disco: A DJ is spinning all night in a tent where everyone looks to be purposelessly lurching around like so many quiet zombies. But then you get to the front of the line, don the large headphones that a smiling girl hands you, and get swept up by some Russian-Mariachi-Electronica effort. It’s something like four in the morning. Nathan falls in the mud. Harold passes out on top of the ice chest. When did we get back to camp?!

6/13
I am starting to swim through these muggy mornings; the natural result of waking up marinating every day. I float with the others down the now-mud road to Centeroo at around 3 to park myself at This Tent for the three sets I've been most excited to see: Bon Iver, Of Montreal, and The Decemberists all back to back. Most of our group has come along for Bon Iver at least, and we settle on the grass and begin to cook slowly. It's the hottest day yet, and the sun is insistent and brutal. My cousin Chris and I have no success in finding each other in the landmark-free crowd, and when I give up and come back to our spot, everyone else I know has vanished. I'm glad to be liberated from them however, because it means I can take the plunge and attempt to get closer to the stage. It's not happening for Of Montreal, the crowd has congealed. This is a dreadful pity because there seems to be a lot going on and I can't see much of it. About a dozen people appear to be running around on stage, and I can see a giant pair of papier mâché arms bobbing around over all their heads, Kevin Barnes is clad in something like a pair of mangled angel wings, and at the end of The Past Is A Grotesque Animal, there is a stagewide explosion of pink feathers. Ahhh!!

{"I touched something's hollow"}

I had intended to escape the crush of spectators and watch The Decemberists from a temperate distance; but there is no one to sit with anyway, and I end up having no actual say in the matter as the crowd around me begins an imploding shift towards the middle as people begin to filter out in the break between sets. I wind up surprisingly close to the stage, and I can see everything for a change. It's sort of ironic that I've seen this act several times before, and yet the best spot I've ever gotten is here in the sea of humanity at Bonnaroo. That sea is getting all over me too; it's close, moist quarters up here. In these situations, there's nothing to do but get into it. It is possible to fetishize hipster sweat?

6/14
I missed MGMT's 2 a.m. set in favor of passing out relatively early. The fuses in my brain feel loosened and blown, far from reality. Bonnaroo hasn't been reality at all, which is what I like about it.

{his royal hotness}

I wake up feeling cranky and bizarre. Is this a bender? Oh well. We head into Centeroo early, and I get over everything when Andrew Bird plays his set. He's incredible live, and even Garet is impressed. It's day four of the festival and I've resorted to wearing a dress tied like a loincloth and a turban made out of the scarf I've been wearing all week. Like some pale, insane Jungle Book character. Unbelievably, I am still overdressed. I've learnt two things about Bonnaroo and perhaps music festivals in general:
a) next time I'll just wear bikinis and other scraps of cloth.
And secondovly, I SHOULD have had a parasol. Should have.

We catch the first fifteen minutes of Snoop Dogg's set, just to look at the main stage, which is obscenely huge. There is a visible haze of smoke over the crowd, which waves its million hands and bounces as enthusiastically as any hustler could want.

{'nilla}

This is such an eclectic festival; dominated mainly by hipsters and hippies, who all have a cultivated appreciation for hip-hop, apparently. Nice! We leave that set early to catch the second half of Band of Horses, and literally trip over Harold who is asleep in the outskirts of the crowd.

{not Harold}

The people from the Wal-mart party chide me via text about how we never managed to meet up. I feel vaguely guilty, and then go back to camp to eat a sandwich. Chris comes over to say goodbye. His stylish girlfriend Hollis tells me I should cut my hair short. I wish she'd told me this BEFORE I sweltered under it all week. But still, I think I just might.

6/15
We wake, compact the RV back into something drivable, and the odyssey home begins. I wonder if it will be an easier trek back due to the requisite traveling toughness acquired? Or will it be a westward hell? We drop Nathan and Jeff off at the airport so they can fly back, as was previously arranged and fought about. Oh well, at least there will be more room. A light rain starts to fall over Tennessee’s greedy greenery. It looks so nice when viewed from a window. The scene darkens abruptly into the scariest thunderstorm I've ever seen; purple bolts of lightning come all the way to the ground, and the thunderclaps sound like gunshots. We all scan the horizon for descending funnel clouds per the weather warnings, but there is nothing. I'm disappointed, although a Texas native I met pointed out that tornados may not be the sight I expect; as most of them are just a gray smudge against a gray sky full of darkness and gray rain. Anticlimactic! The south passes. We find out that workers cleaning up Bonnaroo found a guy our age dead in his tent.

A night comes and goes somehow, and we are back in the southwest.

{roadside seating}

I trace our tracks back through New Mexico, which has the prettiest highways; all raked rock gardens and overpasses that look like art pieces. There's a sort of swept spaciousness to the settlements here that mimic the landscape almost to the point of camouflage. The exception to this is the numerous clusters of beached cars and singed trailers that litter the endless space between towns like funny skeletons. A desert dichotomy, I guess. We stop in Flagstaff desperate for a meal that isn't either fried or swimming in gravy.

{hungry babies}

The town is surprisingly lovely, and looks sort of like a combination of Tahoe, and Buffalo NY. The chilly grey skies that greet us add to the sense of rightness: this is how cloudy weather is meant to feel. Are you listening, Tennessee?? Take notes. We stop in a parking lot for a quick nap before the last driving leg begins at 1:30 a.m. It has to, if we're to get this RV back by the morning of the 17th. We are all getting pretty good at crashing on cue, and we all set alarms to ensure that the imperative drive gets underway on time. This proves to be pointless, as none of them penetrate our collective unconsciousness, which is still on full blast when I wake up randomly and it's 2 a.m. I guess we've all gotten pretty good at sleeping through noises, too. I bless my neurosis for a change, and rouse everyone. Six hours left? Nine hours? Some single digit, thank god. We slip back into the desert of California without fanfare, and remember with some dismay how bad the air quality in Los Angeles is. Back at home, armies of spiders have invaded the house in our absence, and I find a scorpion relative creeping along in the front hall. I put on some music and trap it in a jar. Garet has passed out on the couch. Sounds about right. What’s the next festival? Pitchfork? I’m ready alright.

Trip Diary Coming Soon

Ah Bonnaroo! Where Hipsters and Hippies all come together to look surprisingly similar splattered in mud. Where the lineup blows your mind salaciously! Where rules and social morays dissolve on fast-forward, as you are pressure-cooked in soporific humidity. Where it takes 36 hours straight to drive from southern California. 34 if the police take no interest in you.
It took us 36.

Tennessee local: Y’all are in the south now. And not just the bible belt; this is the buckle of the bible belt.
Me: Yikes! Right above the crotch!

"Our Liberties We Prize And Our Rights We Will Maintain"

Today, the state of Iowa became the first hunk of the Midwest to be great and declare a previous ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. A-Plus and gold star, Hawkeye State!
This is especially good news in the face of my own fool homestate's recent civil regression. It's very encouraging to see that the inexplicable passage of Prop 8 isn't hindering progressive, rational thought elsewhere. Keep up the good work Iowa!

As for you, California... you need to see me after class.

La Blogotheque's Take-Away Show series continues to be one of the most endearing things on the internet. Incredible bands jam their hearts out in tiny/random spaces while sidled-up cameras catch every scrunch of their live-singing faces. Below is Sigur Ros being great all over the mother of blasé Parisian cafes. 

Sigur Ros - Við spilum endalaust - A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

Crumb-Child

My first foray into comic book art is now downloadable! Written and spearheaded by the dynamic Shawn Kittelsen, this black & white edit is just a prelude to the full-color publication that will be out later this year. And if your appetite is whetted by all things paneled, do check out Shawn's other projects here. A fine titter!

America, Ho!

At a seedy bar and grill, I was recently given a promotional tank top for Wild Turkey's newest ipecac replacement: American Honey. And all it took was a simple sharpie to make it actually respectable! 

Charity Hilarity

They have the same laugh! And does Elmo know what necrophilia is?

Fleshed-Out Request (Of The Whenever)

At the Behest of Shonna B, and her love for a certain doe-eyed droid! A larger version of the design and all its available colors can be seen here.

The GIFt of Titters

This image turns out to be hilarious when paired with just about any song of your choosing. 

All The Boys Together

Just Want To Play With You (He/She/It)

of Montreal - Id Engager from Polyvinyl Record Co. on Vimeo.

Ég Tala Bara Ensku

If you want to learn Icelandic but don't have a native son or dóttir of that enigmatic nation handy; don't skip over to Rosetta Stone looking for a clue, because that gold-plated program's list of languages will disappoint you. But you can put the $500-ish you were going to spend on such fancy software into your personal-habit fund and breathe easy, because the University of Iceland has us all covered. Only a very brief registration is required before you can swim free of charge through the wonderful web-2.0 world of beginner and intermediate language lessons. You'll learn in no time from people like the Radiohead bear's modestly-hot, scantily-clad mom the correct pronunciation of things like handklæði (towel) and sundbolur (bathing suit). Which are important words in a nation whose equivalent of a coffee shop is the local geothermal spa. YES PLEASE.

Intelligent Skepticism & Chubby Cheeks vs. Kent Hovind

[imported from 7/25/08]

The mouths of babes are overrated. The best stuff comes out of the chubby faces of bespectacled, erudite, British adolescents. Watch as schadenfreude subject Kent Hovind takes a well-deserved battering from the charmingly sarcastic logic of the self-styled ThetaOmega in this first of his many-part video series, "Debunking Hovind".

Game Hybrids: One That Actually Works

[imported from 4/15/08]

Though frequently a barrel of titters on their own, some parlor games often seem to lack a crucial element or two that keeps them from being completely awesome. Oftentimes it's easy to correct this; as long as there's enough alcohol in the house, and the game provides enough suitable cues for drinking. However, it's not a cure-all; Monopoly and Life suck no matter what you're sipping on; and you can only spill crappy wine on your friend's Betrayal at House on the Hill board so many times before he bans liquid from the table during play entirely. Besides, there are so many fun games out there that it stands to reason that hybrids of the favorites will be even better than the sum of their parts. Unfortunately, it's actually not that easy to successfully incorporate Taboo's buzzer element into the too-quiet, drawn-out turns of Scrabble; but do not despair! Because as it turns out, there are two old favorites that can be stitched together and shocked into life as the hot monster known as TELEPHONE PICTIONARY!

Now, my idea of a good time is anything involving either misinterpretation or doodling, and Telephone Pictionary brings both of these to the table in a whirl of a good time. For those of you who have never experienced this immaculate hybridization, here are the rules:

Players: Four or more, though things start to get out of hand at around nine players.

Materials: A stack of notecard-ish sized pieces of paper. Every player gets a stack whose number is determined by how many people are playing. i.e., if there are six people playing, each player gets six sheets of paper.

Setup: Number each sheet in your stack. Then on the first one, write a phrase or sentence. Song lyrics, sayings, quotes, or random thoughts are all fine.

Play: After writing the sentence, each player passes their stack of papers clockwise. Upon receiving their new stack, each player reads the phrase on page one, moves page one to the bottom of the stack, and on page two, attempts to draw the phrase or sentence as best as possible.
When finished, that player leaves their drawing on top of the stack, and passes their stack to the right again, and the next player has to interpret the drawing as a sentence on page three. That player then moves the drawing to the bottom of the stack -leaving their sentence on top- and passes it again. Repeat passing the paper, alternating between writing a sentence or drawing, until the paper comes back to its originator. Leaf through your stack and have a hearty HAR at how your sentence changed as it was interpreted and re-interpreted by your fellow players.

Strategy: There is no way to win or lose, but there is a way to maximize hilarity in my opinion. 

1. Some phrases are pretty easy to represent visually, and tend to make it through the filter of players without much change. For instance, things like “Raining cats and dogs” and “Stop in the name of love” are likely to come back to their originator largely unscathed. And that is hardly a laugh at all, so what I prefer to do is-

2. Choose a phrase that you know will be very hard and see what fundamental truth you get about the universe. “Goodness Gracious Great Balls of Fire!” came back as "A True Catholic Sister Will Burn Your Balls Off". See? Words to live by!
Phrases involving colors are to be avoided, since it's pretty impossible to actually draw a color. And just like in regular Pictionary, the use of letters and numbers is not allowed.
Still not enough for you? Make it a drinking game. After all, it's not Monopoly.

Why Honking Is Wonk

[imported from 3/12/08]