mike taylor’s website is up in a workable state, and looks awesome. or rather, it looks transparent and the pictures look awesome, which is better. there’s only one obscured self-portrait and it’s taken in the HBML bathroom. MTMTMTMTMT, our favorite pizza chef and bouncer, leaves notions of facehood to other more sussable mike taylors.

today’s silk screening day went really really good, thanks to everyone that came out! our rent money is secured, i’m feeling good. mickey z showed up gunning for new intern mickey DM, who was not on premises, and good thing because i think a highlander thing was going to go down, and mickey z can sure swing a letter opener, or to be more precise, she has that zest for mess that will always separate the devoured from the satiated. or so i have gleaned. in any event, nothing went down and the day was effrotless until it really sunk in that i had not eaten nearly enough and i lost all social grace. ok, not all but some. enough.

it’s labor day weekend. tomorrow is somehow two more days, even though it’s really all the same to me.

running late as always, i’m just burning the screens now for today’s silk screen thing. which means i *jusst* finished drawing it (working in popeye, jesus and tweety bird proved more difficult than i anticipated). if everything goes perfect i’ll get to the shop right at 2. looks like the idea “free coffee” isn’t going to happen but that’s ok.

i’m already having a crazy day, dreaming this morning/last night about dr pepper and lightning bolt, then waking up at 6am, getting a dr pepper at the gas station, drinking it on the porch at distant castle reading the only thing– that water-logged spin magazine with the big “noise rock” article (this is 2004) featuring those brians. trying to remember other shit from the dream, can’t.

meeting with the intern again today. last night helping parpar build a webiste, we split a 1.25 scale beer and talked lofty, grand even, and pronoic. typical hubris and we got almost no work done but we did order a pizza. oh shit, which i have a piece of cold kickin’ in the fridge! it is 8:17am. i’m going to take another half-hour chunk out of robinsono kruso, do some crunches, eat some fruit.

also not that this exactly inspires confindence but i found (?) $140 i had squirreled away, so that puts me not on easy street but on an easier grade of street than i had anticipated being on. which is to say, this saturday (another silk screen day) is still make or break, but the break-line is far lower. uh, still, come on down, it’s going to be awesome.

i just remembered, the guy at the pizza station in my dream had a justin green t-shirt on, backwards, that i commented on. he didn’t know who he was, just found it as a $2 funny shirt somewhere. so, what?, stay on target is the dream message here? ok, dream!

today me and pars went to a movie with mariah pariah and dave p, we saw hellboy 2, which i enjoyed but it wasn’t spectacular. pars treated me to the movie and snacks (belated birthday present) and mariah also had a present for me- a big box of tiny tiny plastic toys, and lots of dice with an unusual arrangement of pips that goes 0 0 1 1 2 2 instead of 1 2 3 4 5 6. i’m trying to come up with a new game that uses a ssmall number of these weird dice, and it’s tough but i think i have something, currently titleless (which isn’t like me, i realize). if i see you tomorrow i may try and get you to field-test it with me.

working on some top-secret shit… also, today i met with my new intern, mickey “DM” o’hara, with whom i’m working on an awesome new publicity project, codename: “rhododendron festival”. wait, can a code name just be the name of the thing? anyway it’s called “rhododendron festival”, more news when it’s more on the way to happening. still: intern. that’s tite, rite?

also, to whoever stabbed (!) my tire while my bike was locked up on highland st today: HI!

well, sure enough a few days go by and my memory’s completely shot. let’s see what we can dredge up, eh?

friday one of my favorite bands, best friends forever played at the go go with the terribles, dead mom the dog (previously the foundation), and bob carlton. i was bummed because i didn’t get asked to play, despite being requested by the bffs, but then the terribles played my song “jla dreamer” and i sang and it felt great to sing for everyone. none can keep me down but me! BFF played last year at this time and it ruled, this time it was even better because everyone knew all the words, and people went super-crazy. they’re like the smiths to me, lots of clever lines about crushes, and everyone clutching at their own shirt and rolling their eyes back.

the next day they came to the shoppe and filmed some scenes for the cosby show idea, which is a little more than halfway through in the filming department, and is going on hiatus so i can do other things with my life. i’m giving myself two weeks from now to have a teaser commercial up on youtube, a few edited scenes, with the backdrops and laughtracks and everything. again, what we have so far is really really really awesome. andy fish is going to help me stage the premiere at the worcester art museum, a prospect i am delighted about.

saturday after work we went to the king st block party, which had as many people and as much music as last year, but everything suffered from lack of a bumpin’ sound system– speakers couldn’t be heard, music didn’t inspire dance. so let a lesson be took: bump it. slept over at purtle’s and all the next day hung out with him and j9, just shooting the shit and almost not going outside, which ended up driving everyone crazy. that night drove to providence for a terribles show at the intersection of batty and vermin st (no joke!) that had to get moved due to a trying-to-sleep baby. the car was briefly broke down and had to be pushed slightly uphill, a task that proved impossible due to the fact that it was biodiesel and the whole backend was greasy and slippery from condensed china lantern vapors. uh, everything was fine with it, ultimately– no worries.

got some more books, including the kirby bio “king of comics” (which is not exactly exceptional but is honorable and necessary and has more than a few amazing pages) and the incredible “rationale of the dirty joke” by g legman. i first learned about this latter book in this article (a good a place to start as any) from the new yorker some years ago. i remember quoting this specifically, but i’m unable to search out wherein i did:

“Legman was a handsome man, with thick dark hair, blue eyes, and a strong nose; because of chronic poverty, he was typically dressed in threadbare clothes with a length of rope for a belt. Friends describe him as tetchy and difficult, but exhilarating to be around. Academics were put off by this autodidact from the murky demimonde, whose rambling prose was full of marginal jeremiads. Legman, in turn, was disdainful of folklorists with Ph.D.s, whom he called “Phudniks” and “cacademics.” Yet, by freely making available to them materials that academic journals were afraid to publish, he helped establish erotic folklore as a respectable subject for scholarly study.”

the book is a tremendous work cataloging thousands of dirty jokes in their original dialects and providing their lineage across time and space, all in a very erudite but readable and even charming manner. in other words, it’s pretty much perfect. in addition to being the world’s foremost scholar of erotic folklore, legman was also instrumental in introducing the art of origami to the west, and claims to have invented both the slogan “make love not war” (possible), and the vibrating dildo (most certainly false). truly a character for the ages. here’s another nice article on our man, here’s his wikipedia entry.

oh yeah, and i saw DP last night and he told me he’s got a new band called “pregnant polaroids” and could they buy some songs off of me. big tiiiiiiiime…

Testing out to this weird new shit, maybe it’s showed up on the website. Maybe you can listen to MP3 on this thing. listen

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i’m on another episode of the snow ghost community show, discussing my opinions on art (and everything) in worcester. i’ll cut you to the end, where i say something i think about a lot in a way i’ve never said before: “anything can grow in a garden– who cares?”. also i call everyone with pretentions of being a fine artist in worcester “a chump”. it’ll be great when that bites me in the ass. i’m trying to not look at the camera dead-on, in keeping with my decision to be 3/4 as much as possible.

today i went to the beach, which was great, but i didn’t eat all day and then at 7:30 got really really grouchy. earlier i passed to will and danielle the meme “D.W-P.O.M.F-B.”, a weird mishearing so psychologically damaging i can’t even write it on the internet.

september looks like it may be money month for me, with lots of small scams (aka jobs) for me to run– chiefly silk screening at RISD and the start on the street street fair. there’s more but i don’t want to ruin it. anyway, also bumping this [next] month is a big installation at the new as220 “mercantile block” space in providence. and this is big, like 20 foot ceilings, nigh-unlimited floor space. since it’s a really great opportunity for me, i’m doing that thing i like to do- something i’ve never done and have no skills at and haven’t really thought out supergreat. tentative title “my life 08″. oh, and i got the ask on the virtue of a couple snappy mass emails, nothing else. this is good, but “nothing else”? why not do the unthinkable and just write letters all day? no more nothing! anyway i’m trying to get two weeks off from my troubles to work on the bastard on site, but that may be unfeasible. but it would be fun, and as close to a vacation as i’ll ever get, it seems.

last night it was a little chilly, and get dark earlier than i had expected. today i realized that it was going to get really cold again, and in not a very long time. i’m strategizing for what will surely be, without adequate strategy, a really really rough winter.

here are my current best plans:

and

yep, just in time for back-to-school, and i’m in hustle mode.

nick said i should so i did, i set up a twitter account. add if you need. because i can, i integrated it into the sidebar, but maybe that’s declassé. oh, i never know what side of privacy diminishment i’m on…

UPDATE it’s only a few hours later but i’ve de-integrated (?) the twitter from the sidebar. i don’t know, i feel like it’s too drastic a change in tone, or syntax. and i wanted people to be able to choose their level of involvement with the minutia of my life (which is why on the front page there are jumps right to fujichia releases, events, and other projects). if you want to dig for it it’s there, but, well, let’s just say it– i don’t want girls i have crushes on to log on and see “still scratching butt” presented in the same forum as, i don’t know, all my brill pill exegeses on 1960s ghoul-group records. see? this is already embarrassing!

more filming of the cosby show friday and saturday got us almost to the half-way mark! of filming, leaving the arduous process of editing entirely on my shoulders. that aside, this week has been pretty tite. i got the HBML site redesign and catalog up and running, and already the orders have been coming in, in a slow trickle to be sure, but hopefully the sort of trickle that is indicative of a larger flood, and more stuff getting added every few days, so, uh, let’s be exponential, monied interests!

friday my bike finally caught a flat. well, actually, i got fed up with waiting and popped the tire with a pin. i know this seems ridiculous, but the tire had a worn-out section that went through the black (exterior) rubber AND through the white (interior) rubber, and you could see an eighth-inch section of the tube itself! and moreover, i’d been riding it like that since last winter! friday i was carrying my computer and pars’ camcorder, plus sshirts and stickers, and i just knew i was going to catch a flat and be late to the shoppe, so i took ML’s old ROLLFAST chopper, which he half-gave to me, and then just because, i went “way of the samurai” and popped that b myself, just to see how much it would take. the important part of this story is, riding the chopper totally rules. leopard-print banana seat, ape hanger handlebars, front and rear fenders… shiiiiiiiiit. it’s a knee-burner, and i have to walk it up all bu the most slight hills, and the understuffed seat is like sitting on another bony butt, but still… shiiiiiiiiit. i thought i would get a lot of people heckling me for being a tall dude on a tiny bike, or being mad for going hell slow in the street with wide squirrely steering, but surprisingly all i got was respect. also it was the latin american fest downtown this weekend, so lots of other lowrider bikes were out, their owners giving me what’s ups. really really fun. here’s a video, shot during nat needle’s “creative laundry” event at elm park: don’t blink.

friday like i said we got some more shooting in the can for the cosby show idea, plus dan and sue came in from boston and hung out, and delivered a bunch of awesome stuff for the shoppe from the sue jeivan lifestyle collection. that night there was a show at the wheelchair, featuring a band from holland called “antidote”, and other usual suspects. great crowd, the bands were fun, i had a blast. there were some brief moments where some people were just acting crazy, then one of them decided this craziness was an act of war, not of love, and things got tense and violent, and then they got broken up, and then one of the parties stormed over to the other party and you think “here we go again”, but then the stormer says “i was only being crazy, let’s hug each other”, then they do. this was totally cute and happened, like i said, a few times. the warhol twins were there except they both dyed their hair back to natural and it’s too hot to wear leather jackets or maybe they were only borrowed. also radical rodney the casual commie, bruce bertleman, dan and grant from nadir, (almost) all the stars. oh, and it was cameron’s 21st birthday, and he got wasted and lovey-dovey, it was totally cute.

during antidote matty buttcakes was throwing fireworks into the crowd from sort of a balcony area, and someone from the venue came up all hard like “are you the one throwing the fireworks?”. buttcakes was sheepishly like “yeah…” and the someone said “why are you throwing them in the middle of everyone? really hit someone!”. pause. “well, not just anyone… uh, hit that guy (points).”.

ok, lots of funny stuff happened at the show but the funniest was that when antidote started playing, all the cushions from the couches (which remain perennially soaked with beer spilled before, during, or after digestion) started flying, and there was a big greasy pillowfight, it was totally pure fun, and big silliness, and perfect. the band was initially psyched but then one of them got his hat pushed back and they stopped to apparently admonish the crowd though no one could tell what they were saying due to language and distortion issues. they resumed, the pillowfight resumed, and then they stopped again while someone collected all the pillows and hid them, then people decided en masse that if they could only be crazy in a sanctioned way it was peace out time, and the rest of the set was pretty lackluster on the audience side of things. if i’m ever in a band trying to get people to wall of death and someone gets from a backroom a boogie board and starts using it as a shield and i’m upset, wedgie me.

saturday more filming at the shop, although i went in early to have breakfast at the diner next door (which was decent) and read comic books i got tricked into buying the previous day (omega the unknown #s 1 – 6, which the comic books store ordered for me even though i only wanted #7 (which they did not order)). saturday a steady drip of folks, then on the way home i ran into vaula van who took me out to dinner at da lat, just when i was good and hungry. dan, you were right about me having it pretty sweet.

i almost didn’t leave the house yesterday, i was working working working on a new page redesign for the HBML webiste. well, barring any weird cross-browser issues, i think just finished it up! now there’s a nice online catalog of things you can order from home, including a new sticker set that me and ML were working on the other night, which is BONKERS!!!

doing a routine image search for “embrace the chaos” yields this as the *first* choice:

good morning, everything!

also, for best image search, i strongly recommend the google image ripper, which i use about a million times a day. it loads all the pictures automatically with no thumbnails or other not-needed information. super usefull.