yesterday’s stArt on the street was ssuper duper fun, the best one yet and they’ve all been awesome. i split a space with jjb buckmaster and nik perry, which was really fun, and which gave me more ability to take walks around and see other people’s stuff. other exhibitors that i knew included ashleigh, who had her sculpey jewelery and home-made hula hoops; eamon, who had paintings; audra, who had paintings and sculpture; and john guida, who had a total yard sale of paintings– no table, no tent, just a blanket with everything saloned out.

the crowd was great, tons of people from the very beginning right up to the end. i only caught a little bit of the music (ok, just bone zone and bj snowden) but what i saw was great and it’s my understanding that this tip was indicative of the entire iceberg. the ubiquitous industrial sonic echo played, of course. hey, even i got on the mic to play a few songs at the second stage. pictures of my set are here, from the part where mz, matt carroll and flo grabbed traffic cones as megaphones and sang back-up vocals for me, which made me super super happy. i met tons of new folks and passed out tons of flyers and copies of the new newspaper me and mickey dm have been working on. i made bank but, well, not to be cocky, but i kind of always clean up at these affairs. more to the point, all the vendors i talked to (which is a select group, but whatever) did good. john guida, god bless him, came up to me late in the day with a big smile, wearing a cool macrame wristband / coffee cousy he just bought, almost embarrassed at how high the cheddar he stacked up stacked up. middle andrew (andrew oesch) and jean coz made a huge cardboard building building party that was super busy all day, and when it came time to smash it all down and flatten all the cardobard for recycling, it was all pushed into an alley, where bone zone set up and played the funnest ten-minute set ever– cardboard flying everywhere and people being crazy crazy crazy. i already posted the video, which looks like serious braveheart, but watch it again and realize how rare it is to have a punk show that is either outside, at a festival, or during the day, plus with tons of actual kids, and cops twenty feet away, that is even close to creating this level of blissful abandonment (from which all art stems). so much fun. it got shut down a few songs in because people were on the roof, which was not something anyone could control, but oh well. joe and tobin were both in the thick of it, and when we all came out joe was the first person i saw so i grabbed him and said “PUNKS RULE OK!!!!!”. he was like “YAAAAAAARRRGGHHH!!!!!!”.

basically, from all points of view and from every level of participation (and there was a million ways to participate) and in every quantifiable and qualitative way, it was worth everyone’s while in a big way. super big thanks to the organizers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

all my pictures are up on pretty alright– i saw tons of bloggers out snapping digicams, here’s jeff, claudia, and brendan. oh, and flickr tag startonthestreet

woke up on the morning of the farmer’s market and it was raining so i fell back asleep, which was awesome. lots of good folks came by the shop on saturday and then the bone zone taping was bone-nanas– it was raining out, it was steamy inside, everyone was super super sweaty. good turnout but actually a lot of conspicuous absences. you know who you are– what gives? dan wars is excused. anyway here’s a phone camera version. it sounded pretty much like that too. the whole thing went off pretty hitchless, the cops came early and we said “we’re filming an episode of a cable access tv show” and they left. or in the words of the poet, “i told them the truth and they fell for it”. afterwards an afterparty at billy blue’s which was totally weird. since the show started at 7pm, and only lasted a half hour, you kept thinking it was later than it was. so when me and purtle left at 7am, the actual time for the rest of the world was only midnight.

tomorrow this RISD silkscreen racket day one, plus i get started on this installation, which is something i’m still not sure about– i mean, it’s happening, but the particulars are still anyone’s anything. i’m at jean and scott’s now, making some crazy faces from the ML face explosion sticker set, which you can buy online, or possibly win at the AS220 print lottery, where it is listed as “FRIED TYLENOL WITH RANCH DRESSING”. scott’s sticker is coming out really good– he just got a funny idea about it but won’t tell, will only show. to quote, “let the boy boogie woogie!”.

providence, i’ll see you in the street or call me up with dinner offers. Q SHAMBAZUG. also lunch. play your cards right: breakfast. CAT SOUND.

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.

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…

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!

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.

mars to earth “fuck you”. or, is mars “in” “the world”? also in FTW news, here’s an eye-opening article on the recent suicide of a top government scientist who was the top suspect in the 2001 anthrax mailings, and the false information connecting the anthrax to iraq (which came from the lab that the scientist worked at). next-level shit!

this morning i was inteviewed on the pie and coffee 508 podcast, talking about inhuman giants and chemical weapons (amongst other things various and/or sundry), with my “i just woke up voice”, in a morning drive-time vein. curious…

for mickey.

my solution to everything nowadays is “a blog”. anyway, here’s the new creatures blog: Li’l Champ. i don’t know yet if every day is going to be a new-new creature, as i would like to also feature toys from the personal collection. anyways, one a day, let’s go (again). most if not all of the hybrid toys will be online saleable. there’s two up now, catch ‘em. any ideas, say ‘em.

so, i have the digicam with me all the time now and i’m snappin’ lots. i don’t want to get a flickr account because it costs money every year, and the money goes to snitches. i don’t want to post every picture here, because that would overwhelm everything else (right?), so i sstarted a low-key photo blog, which maybe i’ll try and integrate into a sidebar here or something. catch the rss if you feel. prettyalright.com. billy, picture from the barbeque are here. uh, sure seems like i’m trying to make everything about my hair right now…