The other two prints

The other two prints

By popular demand:



Mike's Room




Sue Watching Cable


Watching:

The Thing

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Reading:

Deer Park (Buddha, Vol. 5), Osamu Tezuka

The Comics Journal, vol. 275

The Meme Machine, Susan Blackmore

2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, Daniel Pinchbeck

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A small admission

A small admission

Whenever I read about, think about, hear about or otherwise register the term circadian rhythm, I always think of an insect called the cicada rather than what the term "circadian" actually means.

The etymology of "circadian" is in the Wikipedia entry, but to save you time: Latin circa (about) + dies (day) = about/approximately a day. The circadian rhthym is the cycle of processes our body undergoes approximately every 24 hours.

If any of you have lived a somewhat rural summer life where giant cicadas sit motionless on trees for hours on end and just...hum, you'll understand why I associate "rhythm" with "cicada" rather than "circadian".

While this isn't the exact species I used to hear out my window during Illinois summers, cicadas sound something like this. If the little bastards weren't so grotesque, it'd be like a lullaby.

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Zen and the Art of Basketball Jerseys

Zen and the Art of Basketball Jerseys

I don't know how many of you have read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values. In fact, it's been a while since I read it myself. (I read most of it, anyway. It was a class assignment in high school, and I think I didn't finish it at the time as an act of rebellion despite how much I loved it.) A great portion of the book concerns itself with the notion of "quality": how to define it, how to quantify it, where to find it, its level of objectivity, etc.

I don't think there can be any debate--philosophical or otherwise--that could define this man's actions as anything other than "quality". There are some absolutely transcendant quotations in the article. I never thought I'd make such a statement in regard to an article from ESPN.com, and yet...

[UPDATE: You can ignore the editorial box on the article's page. That wasn't there when I originally linked to it.]

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The start of my art (print) collecting career

The start of my art (print) collecting career

This past Sunday, Jessie and I went up the hill from us to a little town called Montrose, which is in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. It reminds me a lot of my hometown except Montrose is a fraction of the size and cleaner. Anyway, we had breakfast at a local cafe and discovered that outside Montrose was having one of its weekly Harvest Market with various fruit and vegetable vendors but also artists, used book sellers, toy collectors and other eclectic purveyors of goods.

I stumbled upon one Jack Spiegleman who had a painting up that caught my eye because it shared a few similarities with the cover of this comic book:


Teenagers from Mars


Picture that cover but in longer shot. Ferrari poster on the wall. A book that had a title involving teenage sexuality by R. Polanski. And instead of a button about comic books, the boy's button in the painting stated, "My brother is a dickhead."

Naturally I started thumbing through the guy's prints. I ended up getting the Teenagers from Mars print, a print that showed a woman smoking and watching pro wrestling on TV (one of the wrestlers is getting his eyes gouched out) and this print:



Girl at Halloween


I now proudly display all three above my dresser, and I couldn't be happier. They're über-cool, and I am excited. They're all so darkly comic, I just couldn't resist them.

Watching:

"The Big O: Series One"

"Batman: The Animated Series - Volume Two"

Reading:

Identity Crisis, Brad Meltzer, Rags Morales (Finished.)

Batman: Hush, Jeph Loeb, Jim Lee (Finished.)

The Comics Journal, vol. 274

The Meme Machine, Susan Blackmore

2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, Daniel Pinchbeck

D