You cannot deconstruct unless you know how to construct. - Alexander McQueen

archive for the 'People' department

When They Start Taking Requests from Beyond the Grave

Friday, September 5th, 2014

Requests will be granted as follows:

1. Imagineers John Hench and Marc Davis will design and oversee the making of my very own Jungle Room.

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Disneyland restaurant concept art by John Hench

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John Hench’s concept art for Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room

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Marc Davis’ concept art for Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room

2. Charles McPhee will paint Dr. Jacoby on black velvet for my Jungle Room:

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Dr. Jacoby from Twin Peaks

3. Amy Winehouse will cover Barbara Dane’s “I’m On My Way” dressed in leopard print for the grand unveiling of my Jungle Room to myself and possibly a few others:

It will look as if Amy has materialized from my Witco barstool because it’s covered in the same leopard print:

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A Witco bar set

Before she sings she’ll ask for a strong kava drink. She likes what it does to her voice. I will have a vat prepared for just such an occasion, this being my fantasy, and serve it up in a sedate Mr. Bali Hai tiki mug. I will tell her to drink it down all at once. Fast. She’ll say yeah, she knows, she loves the stuff, and it’s only then that I’ll notice that a giant tiare flower has sprouted from her beehive.

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Mr. Bali Hai

4. Henry Mancini will persistently but respectfully appear to Abe Laboriel in his dreams and convince him to perform the bass solo from Mancini’s arrangement of “Barretta’s Theme” in my Jungle Room, under the glow of neon swampfire.

5. Stanley Kubrick will direct the as yet unwritten screen adaptation of Jack Vance’s Abercrombie Station. Not in my Jungle Room. There’s no place for a Jungle Room in the film.

Suzanne Ciani Welcomes You To Xenon

Tuesday, July 1st, 2014

My earnest admiration for pinball machines goes back about a decade, when I inherited a 1990 Data East The Simpsons. The backglass and playfield art are mesmerizing. Open it up and I am daunted by the viscera, and even now am only capable of jiggling the power supply to get things working again. The pinball renaissance has been underway here in Seattle for some time. Arcades have been popping up everywhere, hosting tournaments and serving ice cream (as in the case of the Full Tilts, who recently named a flavor “Mudhoney” after the local band) or beer (Add-A-Ball, John-John’s Game Room, Flip Flip, Ding Ding, etc.). We have a museum and a wonderful zine. I was bummed to miss out on the NW Pinball and Arcade Show earlier this month because I wanted to play an Orbitor 1 again.

I’ve always been drawn to Bally’s Xenon (1979). That art. That voice. Well, as Skill Shot points out in their May 2014 issue, that voice belongs to composer Suzanne Ciani, the first female voice ever featured in a game.

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The backglass from Bally’s Xenon. Music and sound by Suzanne Ciani, art by Paul Faris. Photo by Stefan Ulrich.

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The flyer.

Ciani is responsible for all of Xenon’s sounds, some of which she intended as the game reacting to the player. A short, delightful doco about Ciani’s involvement with the game:

Seek it out. Try the tube shot.

And The Truth Sleeps

Wednesday, April 17th, 2013

Below is Morrissey’s excellent open letter on True To You regarding the media coverage of Thatcher’s death. I briefly considered chiseling paragraphs from the monolithic text block, but then I figured it’s an apt symbol of the Thatcher love - much like our Reagan love - being a bit difficult to digest:

Surely how I feel is not nothing?

by Morrissey, 15 april 2013

I have listened and I have seen a lack of truth that we had dared not believe existed in modern Britain. Margaret Thatcher has left the order of the world, and she is not to blame for the reports of her own death - reports so dangerously biased and full of intolerant menace that we now wonder how we can possibly believe anything that has ever been recorded in British history books. The coverage by the British media of Thatcher’s death has been exclusively absorbed in Thatcher’s canonization to such a censorial degree that we suddenly see the modern British establishment as an uncivilized entity of delusion, giving the cold shoulder to truth, and offering indescribable disgust to anyone unimpressed by Thatcher. Even to contest Thatcher’s worth is termed “anarchist”, and this source of insanity - intolerant of debate, is spearheaded by the BBC reporting not on how things actually are on British streets, but on how they would prefer things to be. For those of us who survived despite Thatcherism, and who recall Thatcher as a living hell, The Daily Mail and The Guardian have a steadfast message for us: You are nothing. Our thoughts are further burdened by the taunting extravagance of Thatcher’s funeral; the ceremonial lavish, the military salute, stripping Thatcher’s victims of everything, and rubbing salt in wounds with teasing relish. It is all happening against us. In thought, we have killed Thatcher off a million times, but now that we have the reality of her death, the Metropolitan Police have set up new laws against us, and within paragraphs of law, we are not allowed to register our feelings so that anyone might overhear them. Echoes of Libya? Echoes of any Middle Eastern patch whose troubles are thought too uncivilized for a democratic England where chivalrous respect is afforded to “freedom”, and where we are all servile to “democracy.” It is, of course, The Big Lie. The fact that there will be such an enormous police presence at Thatcher’s funeral is evidence that her name is synonymous with trouble - a trouble she brought on herself. No one wished for it, or brought it to her, yet she created her subtle form of anarchy nonetheless. BBC News will scantily report on anti-Thatcher demonstrations as if those taking part aren’t real people. Lordly scorn is shown towards North Korea and Syria, and any distant country ruled by tyrannical means, yet the British government employs similar dictatorship tactics in order to protect their own arrogant interests. There will be no search for true wisdom this week, as the BBC gleefully report how Ding Dong the witch is dead “failed to reach number 1″, and they repeat the word “failed” four times within the brief report, and a shivering sovereign darkness clouds England - such identifications known only in China. There will be no report as to how “the British people have succeeded in downloading Ding dong the witch is dead to number 2″, and we are engulfed in Third Reich maneuvers as BBC Radio assume the role of sensible adult, finger-wagging at that naughty public who must not be allowed to hear the song that they have elected to number 2. By banning Ding dong the witch is dead (and only allowing four seconds of a song is, in fact, a ban) the BBC are effectively admitting that the witch in question can only possibly be Margaret Thatcher (and not Margaret Hamilton), even though Thatcher isn’t mentioned in the song, which is in fact a harmless, children’s song written over 70 years ago. Whilst the BBC tut-tut-tutted a polite disapproval at the Russian government for sending a “feminist punk” band to prison for recording an anti-government song, they engage in identical intolerance against Ding dong the witch is dead without a second’s hesitation. Thatcher’s funeral will be paid for by the public - who have not been asked if they object to paying, yet the public will be barred from attending. In their place, the cast are symbols of withering - as old as their prejudices, adroit at hiding Thatcher’s disasters. Ancestry and posterity, trimmed with pageantry, will block out anyone with a gripe. David Cameron will cling to Thatcher as she clung to the Malvinas, each in their last-ditch efforts to survive obscurity. Cameron achieves his own conclusions without any regard for the appalling social record of The Thatcher Destroyer - the protestors outside are simply not being British, or, even worse, are probably from Liverpool. When Cameron talks he is simply speaking his part, but he is adamant that the scorn Thatcher poured onto others should not be returned to her. Her mourning family must have considerations that were never shown to the families of the Hillsborough victims, and although Thatcher willingly played her part in the Hillsborough cover-up, let’s not go into all that now. Instead we’re asked to show respect for a Prime Minister whose own Cabinet were her rivals. Thatcher’s death gives added height to David Cameron (a Prime Minister who wasn’t actually voted in by the British people, yet there he is – reminding us all of our manners), and he does not understand how the best reason for doing something is because there’s nothing in it for you. The words of Cameron are assumed to have weight, yet his personal gain is the only reason why he speaks those words. Cameron tells us that the British people loved Thatcher, but we are all aware that Sunningdale and Chelsea are his Britain; he does not mean the people of Salford or Stockton-on-Tees, who are, in any case, somewhere north of Lord’s Cricket Ground. Can the BBC possibly interview someone with no careerist gain attached to their dribble? No. On the day that nine British citizens are arrested in Trafalgar Square for voicing their objections to the Baroness, the BBC News instead offer their opening platform to Carol Thatcher, a dumped non-star of I’m a celebrity get me out of here, and to Sir Mark Thatcher (Sir!), unseen since the disgrace of his involvement in selling arms to countries at odds with Britain (magically, he avoided a 15-year prison term and was financially bailed out by his mother - her moral conscience nowhere in sight as Sir Mark patriotically took his 64 million and fled to Gibraltar having been refused entry to Switzerland and Monaco. What kind of mother raised such a son?) Both Mark and Carol get the BBC spotlight because they mourn their mother’s death, whilst those honest civilians who mourn Thatcher’s life are shunted out of view. This is how we see Syrian TV operate, and this is most certainly NOT a week when David Cameron will advise: “hug a hoodie.” Whilst the quite astonishing social phenomenon of Ding Dong the witch is dead is ignored by the television news, instead we are shown an eight-minute clip of Psy, a funny little South Korean singer who is making all British newsreaders laugh with his funny little new video. Today, news items from South Korea, Belgium and China get precedence over homeland news of anti-Thatcher protests in Trafalgar Square, and the meaningless banality of Modern Media Britain casts a shameful shadow. Repeated and repeated, words strengthen. The truth sleeps as the heartlessness of Thatcher is re-written as a strength, for it was not exclusively because Thatcher destroyed the miners or murdered the boys of The Belgrano that we feel rage, but it was the lip-smacking relish with which she did both, and with which she sent armies of police to batter anyone who opposed her view. Gaddafi did the same thing in the same way. Thatcher could never show sympathy, or empathy, or understanding to those from whom David Cameron is now demanding a show of civil respect for a woman who, like Myra Hindley, proved to all of us that the female could be just as cruel as the male. By 1990 Thatcher was the gift that not even her own Cabinet wanted, and she was tufted out of office. How could such a catastrophic end warrant a statue in Trafalgar Square? Revenge was the vital juice of every move made by Thatcher, and her results produced the most dis-United Kingdom ever seen in history. Although Thatcher was never flesh, her demeanor took on an incurably demented sadness, and her broadcasting tones registered madness … as Britain burned. From all of this we see, in this April week of 2013, that modern media reporting in Britain is a disturbing fog of taboos and prejudices, reviving the divisions that Thatcher hatched, whilst hiding her horrors. Even in death, Thatcher remains ‘the enemy within.’
And the truth sleeps.

Donna Rhae Marder’s Lace and Wire Teapots

Wednesday, September 29th, 2010

For folks near Cambridge, MA, the Mobilia Gallery is showing “The Teapot Redefined 2010″ now until at least November 6th. Donna Rhae Marder’s sewn lace and wire teapots are included in this exhibit, which “explores the possibilities of the teapot form” using a variety of techniques and materials.

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“Oval Geometric Lace Teapot”

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“Oval Geometric Lace Teapot”, detail

Marder’s teapots are an homage to her mother, who passed away earlier this year. They are brilliantly crafted from her lace garments.

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“Steaming Lace Teapot”

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“Beige Lace Teapot”

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“Beige Lace Teapot”, detail

The First Kingdom

Sunday, August 29th, 2010

Don’t judge a book by its cover. That’s what we’re told. This applies to comics as well, as the cover artist is often not the illustrator. But while visiting the Comicshop in Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighborhood last weekend I judged a book by it’s cover. Covers. Digging through boxes of deeply-discounted books (the Comicshop is moving after 30+ years in their current location, so a big sale) I found singles of Jack Katz’s The First Kingdom. Not being familiar with this book, I was blown away by one cover after another. Flipping through some of the richest art I’ve ever seen I knew my judgment was sound, that this surely would be a rewarding read. And so it is.

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Jack Katz’s The First Kingdom Book 12, published by Bud Plant, Inc., 1980.

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The city wears a slouch hat

Monday, August 16th, 2010

“Just feel that good clean power surging in from the dark…Ah, but listen to her! She’s driving in, she knows what she wants, there’s no hero or devil on earth that can talk back to her…Come on in, girl!” The man talks over his beloved sea to “The Voice”; both having isolated themselves out there, away from the City and its people. This is one of my favorite lines from “The city wears a slouch hat”, a radio play written by Kenneth Patchen with a score by John Cage. It was broadcast on May 31, 1942 by WBBM radio station (Columbia Broadcasting System in Chicago) and is the Voice’s surreal journey through the City, culminating in a message for humanity in a time of World War.

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“The city wears a slouch hat”, a radio play written by Kenneth Patchen with a score by John Cage. Cover art by Patchen.

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Hipster Priest: A Quietus Interview With Alan Moore

Monday, July 12th, 2010

Bumped into a great interview with writer Alan Moore (but aren’t they all, though?) on The Quietus, which is coincidental because I am currently swimming upstream through Moore’s Dodgem Logic #3. It arrived by slow boat two days ago:

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Wraparound cover art for Dodgem Logic #3 (April/May 2010), drawn by Moore himself.

My reaction to The Quietus article’s title - referring to Moore as a hipster - was knee-jerkishly negative until I read through the interview and now understand the connotation: Moore as autodidact and not Fauxhemian (I prefer “Doucheoisie”):

[Hipsterism] used to be a fashion statement, but it was information as a fashion statement which is probably going to do you more good than the clothing you wear. I got an incredible education starting from the point at which I was thrown out of school. Now, I could probably hold my own intellectually with most people who have had university or college educations. And indeed some of them will have done courses on my books. So, despite the fact my ‘education’ ended at 16, I had hipsterism, which was wanting to be hip, and that led me to read this incredibly diverse array of books on science, mysticism, science fiction, literature, art… I would find out about these movements that I had heard about, and it’s given me a pretty comprehensive education. Now I am an autodidact, which is a great word… I learned it myself.

“Information as a fashion statement”? Can self-education be fashionable if it can’t be commodified; if it can’t be worn, drunk or tattooed on? (Interestingly, Moore is listed as a “Notable Autodidact” in the Wikipedia entry for “Autodidacticism”.)

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Look at THIS fucking hipster. Photo of Alan Moore from “Hipster Priest: A Quietus Interview With Alan Moore”.

Richard Fariña: A Case of Criminal Neglect

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

Halfway through Céline’s Death on the Installment Plan the ellipses started floating under my eyelids like retinal flotsam. I needed a break, a breezy intermission. Browsing the stacks I came across Richard Fariña’s Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me:

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My copy of Richard Fariña’s Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me. New York: Dell Publishing, 1969

Oh yeah. I keep meaning to read that. It’s got a Pynchon quote on the back. As it turns out, Been Down So Long has some of the most haunting prose I’ve ever read. Why did I neglect this book for so long?

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Sean Dietrich

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009

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The Space Needle as interpreted by Sean Dietrich

Couldn’t make it to Emerald City ComiCon and was informed I missed Sean Dietrich - one of my favorite artists/writers. (My husband came home with some of his original art so I didn’t totally miss out.) I met Dietrich three years ago at ComiCon and remember him being approachable and a pleasure to talk to. For folks in San Diego, he live paints in various clubs downtown. He’ll be painting along side My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult at the Beauty Bar May 26th.

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Beauty Bar flyer

The Charisma of Asano Tadanobu

Monday, December 4th, 2006

Variations in menswear are spun from a few basic ingredients and when the occasion calls for formal dress, it is understood to be - or at least I understand it to be - a suit and tie affair. Regulation uniform. Where a woman’s cluster of diamonds or crystal beading catches a person’s eye a man must rely on his charisma, reputation and at times his tailor to stand out. I understand so little about menswear and am likely minimizing its potential, but I believe a man looks best in basics. So, instead of listing favorite menswear designers (the list is very short), I thought I would approach it from another angle: if I designed menswear, who would be my muse? Asano Tadanobu.

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Asano Tadanobu, SO-EN December 2005

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