I’ll be starting to write on the blog on a daily basis. I have off of work tomorrow and I’m rather excited about it. I’m going to start the day by watching Sportscenter, eat some breakfast, and put on a pot of coffee. Then to the blog, where I will rant about some recent sports topics, art topics, and whatever else.  And now for some images….

This is a sharpie drawing of English Footballer Wayne Rooney of Manchester United. For the most part, I dislike Manchester United, for I am an Arsenal FC fan. I do, however, like a few players that play for Man U. Rooney is one of them. I figured I’d put this up while Man U is on a hot streak.

I finished this painting in March of 2008. It is titled “Human construction, adaptation, and nature’s inevitable rejection of man-made objects.” Inspirations include Google Earth, major cities in the U.S. and around the world, and flying in airplanes. Materials include acrylic and sharpie.

Radiohead is always ahead of the curve. They use their albums, live performances, and music videos as a vessel to stretch the boundaries of modern music. This is Radiohead’s new music video “House of Cards”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nTFjVm9sTQ

This is a “making-of” video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnQaEoJsYQE

Here is a video of Radiohead live in Manchester in 2008. I saw them at Lollapalooza 08 and it was quite an  overstimulating spectacle. The above video is of 2+2=5 and Idioteque, the one below is of Paranoid Android.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpS-aPvy6OY&feature=related

This one is actually from Lollapalooza. Soldier Field has a family camp out night and were shooting off fireworks. Soldier Field happened to be directly behind the stage Radiohead was playing on. At about 6:30, the peak of the fireworks match the peak of “Fake Plastic Trees”. That was definitely one of those unplanned, “had-to-be-there” moments.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOCwOrccBSA

Here are some of my own images:

“A collection of remnants and relics from no particular series of events from the past smashed together to provide a clear and vivid window of what to expect in the future.”

2006

media: acrylics, oil, sharpie, wax, illustration board, cardboard, old cigarette boxes, compact disc, street debris, etc.

While this piece was being created, I had a large studio space that I shared with 2 friends. Every wall in the studio  was painted black, and there were no windows. The more I worked in the studio, the more I realized how effective the studio was to the production and process.

Time was easy to escape there. I would work for a couple hours, which would feel like a few minutes (or vice versa). Eventually I would lose touch of whether the sun was up or down.

The black walls made me feel like I was in limbo as soon as I entered the studio. It was a place where gravity, time, and space didn’t exist.

The acoustics in the studio were pretty amazing, too. The only albums I listened to while making this painting were Radiohead’s Kid A, Aphex Twin’s Come to Daddy, Bob Dylan’s Live in 1966: The Royal Albert Hall Concert, Jimi Hendrix’s Live at The Monterey Pop Festival, and Beethoven’s No. 12. There was no particular rotation. Sometimes I would even listen to the same cd 3 times in a row.

Beck has always been one of my favorite musicians. His multi-layered, multi-genre compositions pleasantly snub and embrace postmodern culture at the same time. Beck is a scientologist, a religion that I am quite weary of (any religion founded in 1954, to me, is not a religion), but most of the time I am able to put that fact aside while listening to all of his great albums. My favorite album is Midnite Vultures. Here are the (special multi-colored) lyrics to “Hollywood Freaks”:

hot milk mmm…tweak my nipple champagne and ripple shamans go cripple my sales go triple we drop lobotomy beats evaporated meats on hi-tech street we go solo dance floors and talk shows hot dogs, No Doz hot sex in back rows I wanna know what makes you scream be your twenty million dollar fantasy treat you real good expensive jeans Hollywood freaks on the Hollywood scene touch it real good if you want a piece party people know I’m that type of freak people look so snooty take pills make them moody automatic bzooty zero to tutti fruitti sex in the halls niagra falls local shopping malls receive anonymous calls hot like a cheetah neon mamacita eat a tacoria pop lockin’ beats from Korea looking like jail bait selling lots of real estate looking like a hot date Banging like an 808 do you want to feel this? do you want to feel this? Norman Schwartzkoff something tells me you want to go home champagne, bibles custom clothes you own calling up from special area codes Hollywood nuns with the Hollywood phones I got nothing to do, nowhere to go I’ll tell you what you want if you want to know satin sheets tropical oils turn up the heat till the swimming pool boils let all the neighbors read it in the papers making all those gentlemen cry realistic tears jockin my Mercedes probably have my baby shop at Old Navy he wish he was a lady