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Missed the premiere broadcast of Lloyd Dangle’s live streaming video feed last week, but somehow managed to tune in to the wrap up of this week’s “Big Ass Sarah Palin Episode.”    And well worth it!

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How is it that my brother, Po, marooned out in the wilds of the high desert at Canyon Blanco is first one to tell me about the synthetic brain news?    Here I am, wired up to the ears with wireless routers zapping me and servers buzzing underfoot…only a beer cap toss from a major data center…and as far as I knew I had a unique and unreplaceable hunk of gray matter floating in my skull.   Sure it’s a little frayed around the edges, has its foibles, is a beast when it comes to  cold starts on a winter morning, but still–after all it’s been through–it seemed a right decent old brain, as far as I was concerned.  But now we know that these dweebs over at Blue Brain Project have already concocted a rat’s brain, and are madly tuning their skills to create a human brain within ten years.  **BBC Story**

Is it just me, or does that seem like it might not work out according to plan?

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It is hard for me to imagine, but I am more than forty years old, indeed very close to fifty years!   I know, dear reader, you will be startled to hear such a thing, since all you encounter on my blog are absurdities, and many seemingly juvenile links to old comic books and science fiction artists.   But there is reason encoded behind the screen of disconnected trivia that you find here.   In fact, I am arranging these posts into a secret code; nor would it especially please me to know that you have figured it out…the news is not pretty! These are clues, do with them what you will.   But mind you, time and decades are flashing past like lightning!   Like a cinder snapping out of a burning log in the fireplace, ride this moment like a rocket…

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Reading Clay Shirky’s latest thought-piece on the demise of newspapers poses for all of us the interesting question:  what sort of social / professional / technological model will we develop to replace print newspapers when they all go belly up? Shirky makes a pretty solid demonstration of the facts regarding the transition from those inky presses (thrashing out miles of newsprint every morning) to a new paradigm, but he is careful not to speculate too precisely about what form that future paradigm will take.  Indeed, the whole point he is making is that we are now living through a revolution in which print media is being overthrown.

During these last five hundred years, the cost of print production and the profits made on the distribution of printed objects was tightly bound up with dissemination of knowledge, art, technology, and of information of all kinds.  Now, with the advent of the Internet and the speedy exchange of digital objects of all kinds, the flawless reproduction of information-laden media objects is no longer bound to the burdens of physical products that must be moved through space.  The near-frictionless pathways that our digital infrastructure provides, has creatively destroyed the entire centuries-old paradigm of manufacturing, selling, and regulating the rights for commerce for media such as books, recordings, images, at least in the material manifestions that we have come to know and love.

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In the post-Hello Kitty Universe, the bizarre blank-faced character known as Tu Siji (Rabbit Siji) is both ubiquitous and actually making money.   Creator Wang Maomao said she couldn’t believe that her random doodles over three years turned into a marketing favorite, earning her more than 100,000 Yuan per year (US $13,000).   Not everyone can be so lucky, but it’s amusing to watch an interview with twenty year old Wang Maomao, recently featured on Zhongtian News Network.

Went to the opening of an exhibit called Arts of Subversion, Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union, which is a very nicely curated show that explores the lives of artists under the opressive fist of totalitarianism.   The most shocking aspect of the exhibit, which of course is deliberately unstated, is the feeling of creeping familiarity that we have when looking at the works — don’t we also live in the same space?  What makes the brutality and insanity of a regime that espouses torture any different from the KGB under Stalin, after all?   As the attendees munched cheese and sipped Hungarian red wine, did they not feel a twinge of empathy for the character of Sergei Kotov in the brilliant (and terrifying) film, Burnt by the Sun?  Or was that just me?

Still, it is always instructive to try to feel and understand what the artists were envisioning, and to appreciate the subtle (or unsubtle) ironies of how they depicted life under tyranny.   Yuri Rybchinsky’s photos of prisons and slavering guard dogs are taken as if they were totally impersonal snapshots from a Kodak Brownie, and yet are riveting for their subject matter and splendid foreshortening which electrify the images with sudden energy.

The untitled portrait (perhaps self-portrait) by the art student, Boris Sveshnikov, while living in exile at the gulag is executed with almost casual mastery.  But the expression of the subject is riven with the poignance of a man beaten but never defeated.

Back in the realm of obviousness,  the large canvas by Alexei Sundakov that appeared over the opening descriptive summary of the exhibit, showed a crowd of people with their backs turned to the viewer, all hovering toward an invisible object that may have existed — though probably did not — under a sign reading meat.    Is this enough to convey the sense of malaise and dissatisfaction that it proposes?  Only through the flawless sterility of the scene, painted with smooth mastery reminiscent of George Tooker.

The exhibit featured a number of excellent pieces, including those of Peeter Ulas, Vello Vin, Ernst Neisvestny, and Oskar Rabin, to name a few.   The substance of the commentaries seemed to be derived partly from the book, Beyond Memory: Soviet Nonconformist Photography, which looks quite good, especially the section on Subversive Photography by Ernest Larsen.

The show-stealing image, which appeared on the cover of the program, and which was reproduced on a gigantic 4 meter wide banner hanging from the atrium wall, was Boris Mikhailov’s hand-tinted photo of some Soviet apparatchiks marching along, draped with their honorary sashes.   These are ordinary politicos in a local affair, which is evident by the disorganized band of smiling young pioneers marching behind them.  Etched into these faces are the agonizing realities of being tools in the state machine, the machine that fattens them with luxuries while others go hungry, the machine that hustles them to and from meetings while others stand wearily in lines for non-existent meat.  The farcical splash of super-rich primary colors across the black and white print, gives an obscene, Walt Disney edge to the parody!   How this image provokes us to think of our own times, when party-line weasels enacted policies promulgated by the likes of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the unseen octopus of geo-politicial black artists who stood them up before us!  What sarcasm and gallows humor have we all had with their evil ways, all gaudily pumped up on their own false-flagged patriotism…don’t these bastards all look alike?

Yes, it is that time again…   no, not Presidential Election Day!   World Zombie Day, when hordes of shambling, bloody-mouthed fiends stagger through the streets to find you and eat your brain.   What is it about the living dead motif?   Perhaps when our lives are being decimated by sinister madmen in the White House and on Wall Street, the zombie captures the zeitgeist, and has crowned itself as the mascot of our times.   Zombies have long since conquered pop culture, infiltrated sfnal space, and are battering the gates of academe.   There is no stopping them.   So when you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, as the saying goes, since they will be suddenly manifesting on October 26th in a town near you!

Adelaide [Australia], Ann Arbor [Michigan], Asheville [North Carolina], Atlanta [Georgia], Blackpool [England (UK)], Burlington [Vermont], Christchurch [New Zealand], Copenhagen [Denmark], Dallas [Texas], Ferndale (Detroit) [Michigan], Fairbanks [Alaska], Flint [Michigan], Fort Myers [Florida], Fort Wayne [Indiana], Hong Kong], Hudson [New York], Indianapolis [Indiana], Jacksonville [Florida], Kansas City [Missouri], Las Vegas [Nevada], Lawrence [Kansas], London [Ontario [Canada], London [England (UK)], Los Angeles [California], Louisville [Kentucky], Lyon [France], Mobile [Alabama], Nashville [Tennessee], New York [NY], Omaha [Nebraska], Orlando [Florida], Paris [France], Philadelphia [Pennsylvania], Pittsburgh [Pennsylvania (Monroeville Mall)], Portland [Oregon], Roanoke [Virginia], Roaring River [North Carolina], San Diego [California], San Francisco [California], San Jose [Costa Rica], Santa Rosa [California], Seattle [Washington], Shreveport [Louisiana], Sioux Falls [South Dakota], Sydney [Australia], Tampa [Florida], Tucson [Arizona], Worcester [England (UK)]

An interesting article by James Parker in this week’s Phoenix recounts Jack Borden’s life of cloud gazing. Struck by an amazing epiphany while lying on a grassy slope in 1977, Borden suddenly experienced the entire sky as direct connection with the cosmos. According to Jack, he was… “just waking up from a nap, and - there it all was! Close, out-of-scale, real close. It was scary. I looked at it for not longer than three seconds and I had to look away. It just plain blew me away! This tremendous scene, somewhere between majesty and frightfulness - it was as if the sky were saying, Goddammit, if I couldn’t do anything to wake you up, maybe this’ll do it!” After this satori, Jack went on to found the non-profit, For Spacious Skies, which has promoted the art and benefits of cloud gazing for more than twenty five years.

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If you haven’t yet seen the film, Dark Knight, please do that first before reading this post, because you will definitely spoil the “tension” of the plot, assuming there is any. For some reason this film is a runaway hit, with critics pissing all over themselves to outpraise each other. From my perspective, despite some excellent cinematography and a stellar performance by Heath Ledger as the Joker, it is really just another Batman movie, but with a troubling dichotomy at its core that is getting scant attention. There are clearly two very conflicted subtexts in the film, one centered on Batman and the other on the Joker. Batman’s supposed internal conflict we are all familiar with — having to take the law into his own hands in order to fight evil — dating back to his first appearance in Detective Comics #37; on the other hand, unlike the ridiculous slapstick Joker that Burton and Nicholson gave us, Ledger pushes his exploration of the Joker’s mercurial psychology into whole new realms of uncharted territory.

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Here is an amusing offshoot of the LOLcats - photoshopping phenomenon, which takes up the subliminal algebra of brands. The emphasis is on visual semantics of famous brand logos, but there seems to be plenty of room for subvertising. What strikes me as interesting is that the subversive elements of the composition could be completely unintentional!

Nothing like a trip to Eel Island in Steve Canyon Comics (circa October 1951). Here we discovered the cruel anarchist resistance leader, Sookie Susie, who took the trouble to kidnap the US officer’s wife, Delta Index. The question is, did Delta actually do a day’s work in her life? Probably not. You have to wonder if the vixen, Sookie Susie, had any connection with Steppenwolf’s Sookie Sookie Sue, perhaps via some weird armed forces joke. Yet another case of trying to unravel memes as they worm their way through pop culture.

Rediscovering this brilliant story from Mickey Rat Comics #3 (1980) by Robert Armstrong reminds me of how important [perhaps even CRITICAL] it was to my development. Not only did I discover the true meaning of street cred and artistic integrity, but I had confirmed for me one of the most profound truths of existence, namely:

this world is just too overloaded with no-taste maniacs!

Play it, Dizzy baby!

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Walking down the street this morning I was thinking about how cultural icons evolve over time. For example, the whole Brazilian Copacabana theme, from Carmen Miranda and her wacky fruit hat, to Chiquita banana commercials,

to some sort of totemic Caribbean dancer that still permeates our tiki-laden zeitgeist. (Interesting side-note, even though Copacabana page on Wikipedia has the totemic image, they don’t mention Carmen Miranda!)

Anyway, I was thinking about the idiotic Monkees theme song, which pretty much runs through my head every morning as I walk under the ominous brimstone-reeking edifice of Harvard Law School–in particular the part where Peter Tork is in a wheeled bathtub scrubbing his back with a brush as the other Monkees push him along the street.

And I thought, oh yeah, they just put that in there because they read Mr. Natural comix where Flakey Foont decides to spend the rest of his life in his bathtub.

Eventually Flakey fixes up his tub with a motor and wheels and shows off to Mr. Natural, with predictable consequences! But then it hit me with a tremendous WHAAM!

The Monkees Show was aired from 1966 to 68, at least one year BEFORE Robert Crumb drew the Mr. Natural episode with Flakey Foont’s bathtub escapade (dated 1969)! Ye Gads! Does that mean R. Crumb was recycling images from the Monkees! Then I started to think about it, and this eerie mind-warping sensation of the curvature of time and space took over my wobbling brain… Exactly where do memes begin, and what is their actual trajectory as they are recycled through pop culture? Where does the bathtub thing begin? Even the Cat-In-The-Hat was eating cake in a tub in 1957! A google revealed that there exists nothing less than a bathtub art museum featuring 100 years of bathtub fixations (okay, must be the nudity), and includes some very weird Scandinavians posing with their sport tubs.

Clearly this is a topic worthy of further study! Should we go back to Diogenes and seek out washbasin allusions throughout history? Perhaps not tonight.

>>>Followup:

oh lordy, check out this amazing chap in Russia!

dvorak has done some homework for us on what we need to know in the 21st century. thanks dvo!