Daily Doodle #4

Yet Another Popular Term to be Sick of

You must have had your head in a book not to have noticed the popularization of the term "PWNED" on the internet. PWNED, of course, is gamer-speak for owned... as in "you're so owned", or "Dude, McCain got totally owned by Olbermann, snort-snort !".


If anything, countless "Pwned" videos on YouTube prove that it's a national obsession to pour over seeing someone you dislike being put int their place, bitterly wounded, getting comeuppance, etc. It really gets those salivary glands going.

What is wrong with everybody?

The End

Daily Doodle #3

Here's today's doodle, drawn the way real men do it on a scrap of ruled paper with a ball point pen. It's sort of a self-portrait of my senior citizen years as I slip further into my eccentric lifestyle à la Howard Hughes (wry commentary on my online dating travails). Hence, the long fingernails and vats of urine in the background.

It's entitled: "The Last Day the Jehovah's Witnesses Came Calling ".


...and here's the "Cleaned-up" version, using my patented process:

always click for big

Daily Doodle #2

I know, I know, I'm cheating because I'm utilizing Photoshop and certain layering effects. But using the trackpad to draw the basic shape is a fairly humbling constraint this side of an Etch-a-Sketch.

This one's called: "Patrons of the Lost Souls Art Show in Various States of Undress".

Daily Doodle #1

When I started this blog, I had an idea to do a high-minded exercise called "Daily Doodle". Each would be rendered spontaneously and posted the same day. It's the usual self-indulgence you've come to expect here. The point is, while I don't always have something to yap about, I can nonetheless scrawl endlessly. So here's one for today. 'Not exactly a traditional doodle but done in the popular medium of Photoshop using laptop trackpad.

It's called "Nocturnal Superbaby Hunts for Loose Change in Sofa".

click fo'biggah

Navel Gazing at its Best

It's interesting to press the mind to go as far back into the earliest eensy-weensiest thing that you can remember. I seem to recall seeing my Dad rolling up to the driveway with a towering rack of BBQ ribs attached to the car and, also, some kind TV set made out of stone slabs. Then there's a blurry recollection of St. Paul going forth and converting the Gentiles. Then there was Henry XIII but, of course, everyone remembers Henry XIII.

Which reminds me...

It's humbling to note that before one's birth, there was no personal existence. It's as though we've already known obliteration and/or "death". Yet on a time-continuum, where every event is connected; where here-and-now is immutably extant with past and future, you could say that every single person is imminently alive and dead at the same time --which explains why many women choose to wear a thick foundation. It's a survival trick of the physically-bound human animal to experience the persistence of time, like frames on a strip of film create the illusion of animation. Reality is virtual. Therefore, there is no "us and them"; no doorknob; no Mexican Hairless. However, there are Taxes. Don't mess with Taxes.

Other idle pastimes include: Staring at your own reflection in a mirror until it appears to blur and mutate into some ghastly melting visage being consumed by ants. Also, ruminating about how human ears are essentially so strange an apparatus yet pass to be aesthetically worthy of dangling baubles from AND the fact that a shape as conspicuous as a nose attached to a human face allows anyone to pass for handsome or beautiful is beyond objective analysis.

It's raining today. What did you expect?

Predictions for 2008

Apes unearth a human doll that talks, causing a heretical scientist and his captive homosapien to flee on horseback.

The Rapture occurs only for those whose names begin with the letter "K" in the phone book.

America becomes independent from foreign oil when it's revealed that gushers happen for everyone that goes "shootin' at some food" in their own backyard.

Romney adopts new campaign slogan: "Whatever, we're all going to die anyway!"

A new generation of lost teenagers adopt the "hobo look" and travel the country with knapsacks, stogies and patched jeans in boxcars.

Death from old age becomes "the new 20".

The Earth spins off axis and finds a new lover in the form of Alan Shepard's golf ball.

Gerber brand "Puree of Squash" displaces caviar in scene from new James Bond thriller.

Political speech writers go on strike, resulting in an unprecedented golden-era of peace.

The annual Rose Parade will be replaced by Macaroni Parade. Floats will be covered in pasta wheels affixed with Elmer's Glue and spray-painted gold. Chef Roy-ar-dee will preside as Grand Marshal.

The cotton gin is reintroduced stoking the country into a new industrial revolution.

The Moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars and peace will guide the planets and Cal Worthington will sell used cars.

A time capsule dating 1938 is excavated from the Chrysler Building only to reveal an embarrassing wind-up dancing minstrel doll.

The polar ice caps will melt revealing a delectable chewy caramel center.

The two major political parties will be so traumatized by the vitriolic language from the opposing side that their convictions will flip as a result of Stockholm Syndrome.

Girls will be boys and boys will be girls, its a mixed up muddled up shook up world except for Lola.

Soda pop will flow from drinking fountains in St. Louis, when the first Oompa-Loompa is elected mayor. People will bathe in the stuff and become very sticky.

All electrical devices suddenly stop working when a 10-year-old child realizes that everyone knows how to use electricity but, paradoxically, no one knows what it really is. Angry mobs with torches hunt down the phrase "suspension of disbelief".

The government adds hot lava as a new food group, declaring it an essential part of a healthy diet.

Numbers are abolished in favor of the more accurate finger-counting system.

Joey Polanski walks down the sidewalk, encounters talking squirrel, followed by ticker tape parade.

[your predictions welcome]

Feral Cat Strut

The current up-tick in the use of the adjective "Feral" has gone too far, especially when adjoined with the word "Cat". Injecting Feral into social banter has suddenly become all the rage, as if it adds an air of personal identification with the plight of the feral. Suddenly everything is Feral... feral chickens, feral monkeys, feral cars and feral presidents of the United States, etc.

Can I get a witness?

Feral-Correctness casualty, the classic Key Largo.
"Aaah, Feral Cat, eh? Yeah. A real FERAL CAT!"

Wrapped Up Like a Deuce

"If you cannot convince anyone of anything, quote somebody else and watch the magic happen" --Geritopia

Yes, you got it here and you can quote me.

Censorship By And For The People

There's a few blogs that I visit habitually. The first, of course, is my own. I'm always anxiously awaiting my next incisive perspective on the world. Golly, what will I think of next? Next stop is a political blog that conveniently assembles the latest video clips of Maher, Colbert, Stewart, etc. Everyone in the comments section is snarling and easily-provoked because it is, after all, politics. Lastly, there's an excellent blog that showcases the goings on in the world of animation.

Reader feedback on blogs obviously is a tricky affair. There's the "flamers", "spammers", "whammers", "bammers", the "thank-you-mammers" etc. There's always going to be a certain parasitic element that abuses the forum which then forces the moderator to eliminate those kinds of comments. I'm fine with that. Lately, though, I've had a few of my own contributions to the aforementioned blogs eliminated simply because I was voicing an opinion that was at variance with the tribe. My comments were NOT brimming ith invectives, spam, links to 911 conspiracies or any tomfoolery like that.

I find it all rather dismaying and surprisingly thin-skinned.

A threat? Me?

It's not Junk if you Share it

I tend to be a packrat and that can be a problem. I'm not a compulsive collector of anything specifically but --alright, I confess... my entire living space is lined with thousands of Big Mouth Billy Bass that all play in unison. Just ring the doorbell and see. Meanwhile, being prone to holding on to useless things extends to a pile of random photos I've lifted off the internet for no good reason. These oddities are duly amassed in an electronic junk drawer folder on my desktop. The advantage of computer storage being that at least I don't have to trip over these items in the hallway.

Samples:

Hey Kid's, it's the now defunct Santa's Village and the perpetually frozen "North Pole" that you could get your tongue frozen to, until they unplugged it. A rather sad amusement centerpiece.

A true adventure into the bowels of the Hollywood Wax Museum. They've since removed the Hoff and his cohorts.

Walt Disney takes a sledge hammer to some cute iron lawn fixtures for a wartime scrap drive. Or was he really making one of his usual anarchist statements?

All that's left of doggy "White Fang"

Only on Ebay. The ventriloquist section photos will never let you down. Looks like Carol Channing practicing her unorthodox form of deep meditation.

Partridge-era Susan Dey on top of her game. Again, there's no point to this whatsoever.

Something related to the the world of Irwin Allen's Time Tunnel, perhaps? A formidable role model any way you slice it.

Another Disney shot. Here in Spain with Dali and wives. Why is this so intriguing to me?

Ruby and Oswald rock. This looks like the kind of novelty shot that everyone on the internet has already seen a thousand times over. I only came across it recently. Stupid and effective. Just he way I like it.

Thank You for visiting my virtual, and happily odorless, junk drawer. Would you believe there are many dozens of such photos just like these to be found on the internet? Please sign the guest book on the way out.

Dr. Smith's Final Conquest

Still sick. I've been reading up on how colds work. What's the mechanism behind the sore throat and the unrelenting rivers of snot? Meanwhile, everyone has their own holistic remedies and tips to offer but the only relief I can find seems to be from my good friend Mr. Nyquil, cherry flavored.

Cold viruses attach themselves to humans and primates only. Other animals get off scott-free. It only takes from 1 to 10 individual viruses to make you sick.

A cold virus is a tiny warlock killing machine swinging a spiked mace, marauding through the chambers of your upper respiratory system. He'll mess with your DNA and he's a randy pest, causing infected cells to explode with droves of replicant viral spawn. All this sex talk is making me feel amorous.

You might ask if these parasites are from outer space. So are they? The curious thing is that there's no forward-evolutionary purpose to all this. It's as though nature has an anti-social side on the cellular level, because apparently we're not supposed to feel all nice an healthy 100% of the time. These things build character, as well as lead to potentially lethal complications.

Maybe this is a microbial Banksy stunt.

Notes From a Resplended Crawl Space

I'm lying around my apartment congested, wheezing, and coughing. Inspired by a steady intake of Reality TV, I thought that detailing my cold in real-time might make for a thrilling blog experience.

There! --right there, I just sneezed! Ghaaahhhh. It's live coverage as each symptom of the virus unfolds, coming at you thanks to streaming text. Will I survive this? Now I'm stooped and dragging my feet over to the bathroom to fetch another wad of toilet paper for my nose. Oh I just caught my foot on an electrical cable. I've hit the ground. This is one of the worst catastrophes in the world. It's a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen. It's smoke, and it's flames now. Oh the humanity!!!

Gripping, eh? If you desire more live drippy sinus coverage, you'll need to subscribe to the exclusive Golden Altar Room.

Meanwhile, very little has been going on, which partly explains my absence. Well, there's very little going on, except for this minor issue of subatomic entropy which is gradually darkening significant corners of the universe. This subject is of so under the radar to the inhabitants of this planet, that it only made the back pages of the Tortoise Lover's Field Guide & Gazette. It's enough to make me sick.

Other topics were pulling at my coattails and vying for attention over the last couple weeks, yet never quite making it to print here at Geritopia (a tax-exempt, semi-nudist enterprise). Among them: How the level of narcissism in L.A. is so grossly all-pervasive as to hamper the acting out of my own self-serving/self-promoting impulses. I'm always amazed at the shallowness of this town and I will do anything and everything to prove that I'm better.

Lastly, I was going to talk about dietary ethics and Domino's new "Oreo Dessert Pizza" --a shit pile concoction of sugary cookie crumbs topped with globs of frosting. But then I sampled one and I was transformed. I found peace and wholeness. Don't be afraid. It's OK to step over to the other side; you'll never need to get uptight again. Eat it. EAT IT!!!

Filler ...but decent filler

Hey Kids, it's the jazzy, abstract "Gumbasia" short by Art Clokey. It's a very trippy vision of the primordial clay world that Gumby's evolved.

Click on the image to see the flick.

Weekly World News: Yet Another Thing That Isn't

This post arrives a bit behind the curve but I just learned that the Weekly World News' last publication was August 27th. Almost more disturbing than the passing of Merv Griffin, I am stunned and saddened at the demise of this fine publication. The WWN was nothing less than conceptual art that you could buy for pennies at the checkout line.

WWN had it right all along.

I'm usually ambivalent about garden variety tabloids but the World Weekly News was different. It was unabashed dreck, which made it dreck with integrity. I would buy them knowing it was a complete waste of my money but there would always be least one payoff article along the lines of "Chupacabra Honeymoons with Amy Carter in Lincoln Bedroom".

For a time, I contemplated moving to Florida and working for the Weekly World News in any capacity. This is what happens when you let opportunities pass.

It almost goes without saying that Weekly World News' uber Right Wing Ed Anger was my favorite editorialist for many years. He was knee-jerk, ignorant, and negative enough regarding just about any subject to make for a fine role-model. Unfortunately, the guy who wrote the Anger articles was replaced by someone else and maybe that's when the rot began to set in.


I think I need to find the last issue of Weekly World News real quick, if it's still around. This is my quest (bidding on Ebay would be too humiliating) ! If anyone sees one, please purchase it and I will reimburse you with rubies and silks from the far East.

Perhaps, in the final analysis (...at the end of the day, when all is said and done...), the problem was that the world didn't deserved a weekly newspaper about itself. You maniacs!

Gene Scott Overdrive

Hey Kids, I've got this runaway hit over at my annex YouTube site. Someone has even copied my video and re-posted it. But the ultimate tribute goes to Dr. Scott, of course.



There's thousands of hits on this thing! More people than I would have guessed either recall seeing Dr. Gene Scott's "Festival of Faith", along with his monkeyband antics over the years, or are haphazardly grazing the seamy underbelly of fringe TV for lack of direction in life.

The clip was transferred from a VHS reference tape that was recorded a while back when I was thinking about painting a Gene Scott lunch box (Yes, I said I was going to paint a Gene Scott lunch box). A friend had given me a vintage Gentle Ben lunch box, you see, which I always found amusing and so I figured that the world needed a companion Dr. Gene Scott lunch box. Instead of running from TV culture like a sane person, I did an about-face and ran headlong into it. It was a very good idea, if I do say so, but I never got around to making the damned lunch box, although you never know.

ART'S INSPIRATION: TV so good, you have enshrine it on a lunchbox

It would be too difficult to explain why Gene Scott was the phenomenon that he was to the uninitiated. Just Google his name and save me the trouble, OK ? I'm way too tired and cranky.

I will say that one of my fondest TV memories was seeing Scott's last live broadcast before the FCC pulled the plug and the screen went to snow. He was going gangbusters with the aforementioned wind-up monkey band which he used to mock the Sacramento bureaucrats who were on his ass for tax-evasion. I'm just glad I had the vision to witness the spectacle, along with my friend Dennis, who's mother once said of me "He's an odd duck". Anyway, Dr. Scott later returned to television via a satellite network to get his revenge on the world.

Now Dr. Gene Scott is dead but if you look up in the starry sky you can still see his his giant silver-haired grinning head orbiting the Earth. And now you know the rest of the story.

Merv

Merv Griffin passed away and did you know that it was the very same day last year that talk show host Mike Douglas died as well? Don't ask me how I know this, I just do.

OK, but the weirdest thing that Merv and Mike had in common, I think, is that they both started each show crooning a song. Then they'd sit down for some intellectual chat with heavyweight guests like Henry Kissinger, Adlai Stevenson, Buckminster Fuller, and Charo. Just think of how alien that custom is to the modern talk show scene. What if Larry King or Letterman began every show by scatting like Mel Torme?

Maybe it would be a good thing. Or perhaps a test pattern would be inspirational, or a book.

Puh'otoshop

Photoshop. I use it. You use it. It's everywhere and you just can't hide from it. Photoshop knows what you're thinking and will haunt your dreams.

Occasionally, I'll find myself just pushing pixels around in Photoshop with no particular goal in mind. True, it ain't no Etch-a-Sketch or Spirograph but it can still be an engaging tool.


Here are tonights' "results". Don't they look heavy, dark and symbolic? Well they're not, so just forget about it.

If I only had my fantasy computer-to-oil-on-canvas robot painting machine, I'd be pretty stoked dude!

Of Our Elaborate Plans, The End

So, like I was saying, my parents recently sold the family business which had catered to private pilots for nearly 50 years. It's an ignominious end to a lot of history; a slow fade due to economic strains, plus the need to retire and watch even more television.

In homage, here's a small sampling of photos that only partially conveys the bootstrapping ambiance of the airport scene. Not only that, but it was the last outpost on planet Earth to vend Nehi Soda in bottles. I'm gonna miss the place.

A burgeoning enterprise. --mid 70s???

I wasn't going to post any photos with people in them, because they'd just see this, get mad, and yell at me. This color shot is exceptional, however, because it fits my memory of the early years the best. While I don't know who these folks are, the girl in the short skirt is standing provocatively at the entrance to a sketchy-looking shack masquerading as an aviation business.

That's where it all started!

Aside from being born on a riveting table, I spent my entire youth pulling weeds around the place. Later, more dignified office digs were acquired elsewhere on the airport field.

I trust that someone reading this can decipher the overt body language in the above shot and comment.

Corrugated aluminum is the key building component to any aviation establishment, or FBO (fixed-base-operation).

Standard hangar with standard scrap heap.

The mythical double doors of flying, once painted with question-marks to confuse customers. It was part of a game to make sure that pilots stayed alert. Which door opened to the big money prize, or, alternately, the foaming rabid wolf? No one ever knew for sure. Many died finding out.

The famous workbench where anything imaginable was fashioned out of corrugated aluminum faster than balloon animals. Great for kid's parties or Bar mitzvahs.

Music was enjoyed throughout the day and blasted over loudspeakers to overcome the sound of pilots starting up their planes. Featured here is a favorite LP for many years amongst the crew called "Demanding, Hard-Nosed-Perfectionist". Waltz music.

A look into a maintenance shed, with a disciplined arrangement of critical supplies. Efficiency equals safety.

I'm not sure if this was a mascot or a very small mechanic frozen in terror. Suffice to say, while he had his back to the Christmas spirit, he really loved gazing at piston parts.


The End
_______

(or is it?)