ok so check it: thanksgiving i hung out with childhood pal eric bennett and immediately fell back into old-fashioined good times, walking in the rain, going to the comic book store and the da lat. eric lives in LA and is the only person i know (right now…) with an imdb.com page. two quick images: 1- smoking weed on the set of a matrix parody with vanilla ice (can i say “weed”?), 2- in full clown garb and with 15-20 other clowns, crashing ultra-posh hollywood list-parties and “causing mayhem” as a regular activity for two years. seriously!

yesterday for no reason i made what can best be described as a striped spire with single eye, protruding from lumpy off-white base.

ok, this is getting out of control with the making animals and not posting them but in the past few days (tuesday – sunday) there’s been a mola mola, or ocean sunfish, manthing (made at my sister’s house where the only fabric i had was a handkerchief i wasn’t fond of destroying), a flea, made thanksgiving day, a miserable dog, the first animal i’ve made that looks incapable of happiness, a crawfish, or crayfish, depending, and a pajama ghost, based on an idea by mike leslie (pictured). ok?

included in the picture is the guitar pedal i made out of wood and toothpaste caps. i use this when i play because i like a real clean sound you know.

was matt carroll the only person that noticed i was in the grey video?

jamie buckmaster has been staying with me a couple days here and there, cranking out pretty much a zine a week– two issues of target metropolis, and a 24 hour comic, all with screenprinted covers, at least two colors each and on weird paper. the important part of the story is that he hates pennies and i keep finding all around the house little nice columns of pennies that mark exactly where he stopped to look through his pocket for one thing or another and in so doing became disgusted at his accummulation of these horrid little disks. it makes it look like the house is inhabited by fairies.

mel soder made a surprise visit back from chicago for thanksgiving you know and last night we hung out with the cheerleaders dying our hair and watching discrete amounts of a trashy late 70s teen sex romp comedy. upon arriving home she kept me company while i made this brown penguin, then we had a slumber party with mike leslie with much giggling and mike having to go work at the ballet this morning and actual scary animals outside his little house hooting, stomping, and ululating (probably deer and coyote).

UPDATE: i fixed the link to the penguin for you meredith, you new-media consumer paradigm.

let’s see, friday was that party (at which i hung out with kpars’ film teacher for mildly awkward fun times), saturday i got my movie taken by a friend of sarge madigan’s for some video production class (interview style, real ego-boosting). sunday… oh yeah! me and jbruce went to the somerville theatre and saw huun huur tu!! HHT is a tuvan throat singing ensemble, tuva being a country near mongolia, throat singing being a style indigenous to the area in which singers sing a base tone and using vocal harmonics produce a second note at the same time that flies high above the other. it totally ruled. one thing to note about the tuvan music scene is that the songs are very landscape-dependant. you’re riding your horse on the tundra and the wind whips by so you sing the wind’s song back. sunlight bounces off the lake and you sing the song that’s both the sound of the light bouncing and the sound of the sun shining by its bad self at the same time. during the concert one of the dudes was like “this is the mountain song, and really, you’d only ever sing it at the mountain, and the mountain would call back”. so the sound engineer laid the reverb on, it was boss. in discussion on the ride home jeremy noted that westerners don’t have such an immediate response to their environment, noting specifically that the terribles never wrote a song about a lake. but really, that’s not true. the terribles “evil skull fountain” is not only about their environment (in a sea of hilarious garbage) but it is a direct quotation. much as the tuvan songs can be said to be composed of quotations (of the light, the wind sounds, the horse trotting), the lyrics of “evil skull fountain” are a direct lift of the words from a box for a halloween decoration they found in an alley. so there’s your interplay. also numerous noise nerds garbling mass media and the sounds of electronic communication and throwing it back up et cetera. a long lineage of reverance & animism.

yesterday’s late night was a turkey (shown), and the day before, a rabbit. also, i added nice pop-up tags to the pictures on the stuffed animal clearing and a weird faq. for your polite edification.

it was only a matter of time, really, until i made one of those sinister/cute brinkmanesque fuzzy priest cone dudes.

last night’s puppet show (jenine and a few other performers) was great, and afterwards we went to a party at eric the dread (aka “night train”)’s house. pretty fun times were had, shouting and carrying on, with much merriment.

nice new england fall day, despite the fact that snow fell last week. today i rode around listening to albert ayler on the music box. picked up a special order at the library (gary panter’s “jimbo in purgatory”) (i love librarians). read a stack of magazines at the bookseller, cruised on to the comic book store to cash in more of my gift certificate. tonight is the first part of jenine’s puppet show “the hard year”, about the last 12 months. the show is at the perishable theatre, next door to as220 in providence, at 10pm, for $5. mike leslie and i (who are more than bit players in young jenine’s life) made the dolls that represent us, to humourous effect. this, the first part of the show, is about the olneyville evicitons. the show wil be performed in it’s entirety on the december the third the nine o’clock the at her house.

in the past few days my one-a day stuffed animals have been: a sentry, a
burning building with lawn feet, a duckbill creature of some sweet sort (very cuddly, with mouth cavity big enough for eyeglass case or sleep-time music box) (shown).

the trick to getting up late is to reset your guilt clock. if you get up at noon, then you look at the clock and see that it’s 2pm and you’ve barely done anything, remind yourself that 2pm is actually your 10am. today i used up some more comic book store credit and got an old issue of weirdo and two issues of “jimbo” at cf’s suggestion. shmoozing with the ladies at the art supply store i swear to god “i’m just a cat- meow!” is what the lady said. other conversations throughout the day. got a lead on tons of lavender fabric, and a bold new direction for my fantasy store “happy birthday mike leslie” (q: how to get a space where i don’t have to sign a lease? a; get a space in the fucking MALL downtown that’s getting a street put through it in a few months! bzzt!).

a clam (?) out of it’s shell,
a green door (w/eyeball peeking through smoky hole), a dogbear of sorts (pictured).

dramatic page revamp in order, just as soon as i finish these rollerderby t-shirts and record an album and a million other things. luckily i started while i should’ve been doing other stuff. also, i need a large amount of fabric (ideally pink, like a hundred yards or more even) and i’d appreciate max/msp for os x.

fujichia: if you don’t swing, don’t ring.

pretty decent review of the noodles inc cd from phil macnamara at wormtown.org. ok, large quote:

NOODLES INC. – “ANTIZOODESPOTATION EP” (Recording Information Unavailable)

From the good folks that brought you Jake Berendes, Cat and Bird Hospital, and Greg Greg comes the eclectic smirk inspiring collective of comic book artists, writers, and assorted misfits and freaks known as Noodles Inc. Antizoodespotation has 23 songs listed on it, yet still calls itself an EP. It open with the Misfits like get in the pit and kill someone hardcore of “Tundra Adventure” though the Pac-Man soundtrack is thrown into the opener and “The Spectacular Achievement” and dog barking is thrown into “Wild Dogs…” they all mostly keep in the speedy straight ahead hardcore. By the time “Horse UFO” comes through with it’s sampled screams leading to “I Like Tough Girls Who Wear Lipstick” and “Berserk in the Mall” as the record descends from rocking and quirky, to annoying and pretty much unlistenable.

“Fear of Being Eaten by a Sandwich” and “Circus Riot” both sound like soundtracks to video games that don’t yet exist. While “Fear…” is a speedy techno mess, “Circus Riot” features the sounds of elephants, monkeys, and other animals over 4/4 headbanging hardcore. The record rest a little while the pretty strummed acoustic “Porch in your Mind Looking at Nothing” eases through adding little burbling electronic blips luring the listener into peace before piercing their eardrums with “Dulcinea.” “Dulcinea” squeals in annoying low tones then at such high decibels that they cause dogs to defecate, so be forewarned.

The record gets fun again with the ghoulish spastic surf punk of “Emily Blood Milk.” Lots of unintelligible shouting, chanting, yeehawing, and a trombone solo. It makes so sense at all, but it’s lots of fun. The CD skipping sound effects on the funky “Rainy Day Okinawa” and the Revolution Number 9ish “A Letter Home” are interesting at first, but quickly become, really grating. After the speedy punk jam “Finale,” the rest of the record, a track of people coughing, tracks of an out of tune and dissonant a cappella choir, separated by answering machine beeps, vocals being distorted and played through a Casio keyboard, and finally a quiet basic flute solo. It’s all relative. One man’s intellectually stimulating experiment is another’s complete waste of time. Me, I like it…until I don’t and then I hit fast forward, or fast forward, some more, and then eject. I guess it depends on my mood. If you’re in the mood, while your listening to this read the booklet that comes with the CD. It’s a pretty funny read full of drawings, poems, and a classic Nancy and Sluggo parody. It’s a nice little bonus. These guys are pretty sharp for guys that play such messy music. I’m glad they spend their spare time doing this instead of making bombs.

all in all, he’s pretty much on the money here, except that i have no spare time and i do make awesome bombs (like this cd).

as promised, i spent the last couple of days in providence, staying with little andrew and jenine for two nights and lee buford once. rode the bus in with mike leslie and right off the bat we walked to the sandwich place where aryder works and he cold hooked us up. went to a show almost every night, no surprise there. wednesday night was drumbarhumba and animental, at some really nice place downtown. it was fun, and andrew made french fries. thursday i drove out to the schoolhouse in hadley with christopher kites where he played a show alongside usa is a monster, buddyship, feathers (king tuff’s band), and animental again, plus this guy from the czech republic who played for waaaaaaaaay too long. the show was good. you might cluck your tongue at this, gentle reader, but i am not always the most at-ease person, and even though i knew a goodly amount of people at the show, i couldn’t shake the feeling of being but a raindrop in a cloud. in a tight squeeze on the way out of the driveway me and christopher scratched up someone’s car really bad with our car and it was someone who lived there and today i got a nice internet message from her so clearly my discomfort is unwarranted so get over it. friday i recorded at lee’s nice studio “sparkle city” and ate sour patch kids. saturday i walked around and seriously everywhere i went people had money to give me for one reason or another so how do you do to that flip of coin (especially nice since lee had to loan me money for a cheeseless slice earlier). that evening we went to see the blow and it was pretty good and there’s two things here: first, the show was really long. the czech guy played again, and again for way too long, but moreover there were like eight or nine bands! what gives? secondly, the blow was good but not nearly the mind-expansive jaunt from two summers ago (last summer?). her show wasn’t narrative the way the last one was, it was a selection of bedroom dancing jams. which were good, but not, compared with what weve seen, great. other acts i liked were dear nora, the first band whose name i can’t right now recall, and of course, buddyship, who i was seeing for the second time in a week. buddyship is jeremy harris and this guy adam’s improv thrash band and boy did they do everything right. i don’t know how to descibe it but that it was the best “imporv thrash” could possibly be.

one-a-day stuffed animals for the last few (and i know they aren’t always animals as such, but that’s my best term before i exit into (what i consider to be dodgy) “soft sculpture” territory) (in order least to most recent):
weird devillock,
autumnal building falling down,
prickly pear cactus, featured, inspired by the greenhouse near andrew’s house,
this pajama-ed fellow.

fujichia: it’s primarily my knowledge of the void that fuels my gum-wrapper collection

fujichia: curiouser and curiouser

ODB RIP.