SWiZZLESTUCK.

Ivan Bilibin/Martin Brizuela

2009-06-12T00:39:00.003-06:00

Two more illustrators to talk about--

Ivan Bilibin (1876-1942) was an artist from St. Petersburg who crossed themes from Russian folklore with the smooth lines and compositional sensibilities of Japanese ukiyo-e prints to make some jaw-dropping art nouveau fantasy borscht. See his art on Wikimedia, FantasyGallery.net and Flickr.

Martin Brizuela is an illustrator from Córdoba, Argentina, who seems to run the gamut from pure geometric abstraction to indie rock Lisa Frank psychedelia type stuff to unpretentious naturalistic sketches. And it's all really good. He's also on Flickr.

The New Illustration (1985)

2009-06-11T16:22:00.007-06:00

I went downtown and got a library card this week. My main purpose in doing so was to find some reference material for a kids' summer camp cartooning class I'm doing next month, but as I browsed my eye wandered over to the graphic design and illustration books on the next shelf over. That's where I found The New Illustration, a coffee table book of art "from the ground-breaking exhibition held at the Society of Illustrators in New York." It's a snapshot of what was the cool kids were doing in early '80s commercial art, a style that I'm a sucker for and that the book conveniently deconstructs for me:

"It began with the rock album covers in the '70s and has developed through styles as diverse as nostalgic, punk, new wave or Bauhaus-revival. It's been influenced by Maxfield Parrish, cubism, '30s industrial design, Vargas, Disney, movie stars-- styles from the deco '20s to the high-tech '80s."

Basically it's the halfway point between '50s pop art and last month's issue of Juxtapoz, with some quaint '80s ticks like pastel airbrush spatters and polished-chrome people with cones for arms. The fact that my generation was exposed to all that secondhand ironic nostalgia during its formative years explains a lot about why I've got such strong affection for pretty much every artistic fad of the 20th Century. Anyway, here are some of the highlights from the book (apologies in advance, couldn't quite get it to lay flat on the scanner)--

Mike Fink

Jim Heimann. I loved this guy's stuff and discovered he eventually became an editor for Taschen Books, which officially makes him a Pretty Awesome Guy.

Robert Kopecky

Robert Risko

Barry Root, who has illustrated dozens of children's books. Here's a podcast where someone interviews him about what it's like to not have a real website in 2009.

Sue Llewellyn

Kurt Vargö

Georganne Deen (from the cover of Oingo Boingo's second album). She wins the Best Website Award because, even though it's kind of a pain to navigate, there's a recording of her performing "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey."

Ritual Action of the Ancestors

2009-05-25T00:03:00.003-06:00

Brainstorming

2009-05-03T10:44:00.001-06:00

Hmm

2009-05-01T00:37:00.001-06:00

Solemn Duties

2009-04-29T10:44:00.001-06:00

Twenty Thousand Leagues

2009-04-20T02:53:00.003-06:00

Casting

2009-04-12T14:17:00.001-06:00

Regrets

2009-04-10T03:42:00.000-06:00

Irony to Burn

2009-04-08T01:34:00.000-06:00

Noam Chomsky Is Ozish

2009-04-07T00:07:00.002-06:00

What Kind of Music Are the Grandkids Listening To?

2009-04-06T17:21:00.000-06:00

Titles for Garfield Books, 2010-2015

2009-03-21T20:11:00.001-06:00

GARFIELD Eats a Lot of Food
GARFIELD Has Cat Diabetes
GARFIELD Can't Move
GARFIELD Is Fat
GARFIELD Is a Fat Fucking Overweight Cat
GARFIELD 50th Anniversary Collection
GARFIELD Takes the Cake
GARFIELD Flies an Airplane
GARFIELD Does Origami
GARFIELD Says Meow
GARFIELD Eats Even More Food
GARFIELD Hates Jon and Odie
GARFIELD the Sassy Cat
GARFIELD You Crazy Cat You!
GARFIELD Oh Garfield
GARFIELD Meets Pat Benatar
GARFIELD World Tour '87
GARFIELD Sits on a Chair and the Chair Breaks
GARFIELD's Liposuction Adventure in New York City
GARFIELD Loses Vision in One Eye
GARFIELD's Guide to Home Improvement, Vol. 4: Kitchens and Bathrooms
GARFIELD and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion
GARFIELD Sits Around the House
GARFIELD: Destroy All Monsters!
GARFIELD Rolls Over in His Sleep
GARFIELD Knocked Over the Spice Rack and Now There Are Bay Leaves ALL OVER THE PLACE
GARFIELD Is Covered with Ants

NCAA Tournament First Round Picks

2009-03-17T20:32:00.009-06:00

This week my friend David invited me to participate in his NCAA "Fighting Mascots" discussion group, so I did some research and came up with this list of my picks for the first round of elimination happening on Friday and Saturday. I'm reposting it here because it's been too long since I've posted here and because it took me six hours to research. I am now a sports expert.

MIDWEST
Louisville Cardinals vs. Morehead State Eagles
Cardinals are seed-eaters, obviously no match for eagles.
PICK: EAGLES

Ohio State Buckeyes vs. Siena Saints
The Ohio buckeye is a foul-smelling, poisonous seed that contains acid useful in tanning leather. Siena's Saints are named for the school's Franciscan friar founders, prone to stigmata and hysterical visions.
PICK: BUCKEYES

Utah Utes vs. Arizona Wildcats
Ute mythology tells of bapets, giant cannibalistic clown-women who poison children with their breastmilk and then eat them. They can only be killed with obsidian arrows.
PICK: UTES

Wake Forest Demon Deacons vs. Cleveland State Vikings
A satanic cleric who rides a fucking motorcycle? So Wake Forest's mascot is basically Ghost Rider in a top hat and tails. Beats the shit out of a generic viking.
PICK: DEMON DEACONS

West Virginia Mountaineers vs. Dayton Flyers
Oh wow you're a Mountaineer? Like a guy who climbs mountains? Awesome, cause on top of a mountain is like as high up as you can go. I'll be sure to wave at you when I FLY OVER YOU IN MY GODDAMN AEROPLANE.
PICK: FLYERS

Kansas Jayhawks vs. North Dakota State Bison
The Bison's name is "Thundar." THUNDAR.
PICK: BISON

Boston College Eagles vs. USC Trojans
Sorry, if you're a generic animal going up against a legendary warrior culture, you're going to have to be the sort of animal that at least *sometimes* tweaks out and kills humans unprovoked.
PICK: TROJANS

Michigan State Spartans vs. Robert Morris University Colonials
I Wikied "Colonial" just now and got this:
"Colonial, A person from a Colony, usually refering to a settler exclusive of any Indigenouse population, normally heavily armed and much stronger than any Spartan(s)."
LOL, okay Wiki vandal. "Colonials" are mostly famous for starving to death in winter, getting taxed without representation and making a halfassed job of killing Indians. Meanwhile Plutarch tells a story about a Spartan kid in military training who, presumably in between getting brutally gangraped by his fellow junior cadets, let himself get disemboweled by a fox hidden under his cloak rather than get caught stealing it.
PICK: SPARTANS

WEST
Connecticut Huskies vs. Chattanooga Mocs
What the fuck is a "Moc"? Apparently it was originally a water moccasin (kind of awesome), then a shoe (um), then the wacky Indian Chief Moccanooga (retarded but at least sentient). Now it's Scrappy the Mockingbird. Fuck you Chattanooga. Meanwhile Connecticut has selected as their mascot a heterochromic-eyed white husky named Jonathan. Well done, Connecticut.
PICK: HUSKIES

BYU Cougars vs. Texas A&M Aggies
I don't see how the Aggies would have a chance unless they were up against the BYU Hunter-Gatherers.
PICK: COUGARS

Purdue Boilermakers vs. Northern Iowa Panthers
Norther Iowa's mascot is "T.C." the Panther. T.C. stands for "The Cat." The Cat the Panther.
PICK: BOILERMAKERS

Washington Huskies vs. Mississippi State Bulldogs
I was hesitant to pick another Huskies team, but huskies run the Iditarod whereas bulldogs have to have their jowls manually wiped for them to prevent infections.
PICK: HUSKIES

Marquette Golden Eagles vs. Utah State Aggies
Marquette's "Golden Eagle" is a boring, unimaginative replacement for their previous mascot, a crazy Indian warrior who would to carry off cheerleaders from the opposing team during games. Nobody really likes the Golden Eagle, so the university had a poll a couple years ago and the alumni asked to have their racist serial rapist character back, but the administration refused (PC thugs), so the Eagle remains by default. Compare to the Aggies' insane meth-head mascot Big Blue the Bull, who will fight you for a dollar.
PICK: AGGIES

Missouri Tigers vs. Cornell Big Red
Not even going to research this. I'm just going to assume that Big Red is a burly, syphilis-crazed trucker who has upholstered his cab with a poached tiger pelt that he took from the home of his Vietnamese gangster boyfriend after he consensually killed and ate him.
PICK: BIG RED

California Golden Bears vs. Maryland Terrapins
I think you turn into a Golden Bear in Stage 3 of Altered Beast. You can do this attack where you spin like Sonic the Hedgehog and take out these giant ants that run at you on their hind legs.
PICK: GOLDEN BEARS

Memphis Tigers vs. Cal State Northridge Matadors
Jesus, more tigers. Matador literally means "killer." They abuse animals for a living and get treated like rock stars for it.
PICK: MATADORS

EAST
Pittsburgh Panthers vs. East Tennessee State Buccaneers
Tennessee is fucking LANDLOCKED, poseurs. Mountain lions at least *used* to exist in Pennsylvania.
PICK: PANTHERS

Oklahoma State Cowboys vs. Tennessee Volunteers
So apparently Tennessee is the Volunteer State because Tennesseans are crazy about signing up to fight in all of America's stupid wars. TN is still above average in active duty army recruits, so I guess the name is still accurate. According to the Oklahoma Cattlemen's Association and its official magazine, however, Oklahoma's ranch industry workers now prefer to be called cowMEN.
PICK: VOLUNTEERS

Florida State Seminoles vs. Wisconsin Badgers
Badgers eat earthworms, grubs and roots. Seminoles eat whatever they want because they own the Hard Rock Cafe.
PICK: SEMINOLES

Xavier Musketeers vs. Portland State Vikings
LOL, okay, Here are some fanciful mascots for North American colleges. Muskets beat spears.
PICK: MUSKETEERS

UCLA Bruins vs. VCU Rams
Do bears ever fight rams in nature? The closest I could find on YouTube was grizzly versus caribou. The caribou was, in the words of one commenter, "pwnd."
PICK: BRUINS

Villanova Wildcats vs. American Eagles
Bald eagles sometimes eat raccoons and deer fawns, so I think they might eat a wildcat if they were starving and crazy enough.
PICK: EAGLES

Texas Longhorns vs. Minnesota Golden Gophers
Umm, maybe a longhorn could trip on a gopher hole and break its leg. Yes.
PICK: GOLDEN GOPHERS

Duke Blue Devils vs. Bighamton Bearcats
What is a bear-cat? That sounds made up. I'll pick the sensible Blue Devil.
PICK: BLUE DEVILS

SOUTH
South Carolina Tar Heels vs. Radford University Highlanders
Tar Heel. Tar Heel II: The Quickening. Tar Heel III: The Final Dimension. Tar Heel: Endgame. Tar Heel: The Source. Tar Heel: The Series. Tar Heel: The Raven. Tar Heel: The Animated Series. Tar Heel: The Search for Vengeance. Tar Heel: The Multimedia Franchise that the awkwardly attractive girl with hairy arms in 10th grade creative writing class is obsessed with.
PICK: HIGHLANDERS

LSU Tigers vs. Butler Bulldogs
Finally, one I can give to the tigers.
PICK: TIGERS

Illinois Fighting Illini vs. Western Kentucky Hilltoppers
The "Fighting Illini" are so named because many people from Illinois fought in World War I (wow!). I tried to find out why exactly WKU's team is called the Hilltoppers, but I couldn't concentrate after reading that they play out of Diddle Arena.
PICK: FIGHTING ILLINI

Gonzaga Bulldogs vs. Akron Zips
Hey awesome more bulldogs. Akron's Zips seem to be named after zippers or something, but they use "Zippy the Kangaroo" as their mascot. DID YOU KNOW: When pursued by dingoes, kangaroos sometimes disembowel them with their hind legs or hold them underwater and drown them.
PICK: ZIPS

Arizona State Sun Devils vs. Temple Owls
I don't have "Sun Devil" in my 3.5 Edition Monster Manual, but "Imp" has a challenge rating of 2, whereas "Owl" has a challenge rating of 1/4. But this is assuming that Temple Owls are not "Dire" or "Monstrous" Owls.
PICK: SUN DEVILS

Syracuse Orange vs. Stephen F. Austin State Lumberjacks
A massive overdose of vitamin C can cause diarrhea and vomiting, but...oranges grow on trees.
PICK: LUMBERJACKS

Clemson Tigers vs. Michigan Wolverines
Yahoo! Answers posters Firefly, Big Jimi and drinkalottajack are unanimous in favor of the tiger.
PICK: TIGERS

Oklahoma Sooners vs. Morgan State Bears
OK is nicknamed the "Sooner State" after the white settlers who rushed into the Indian-abandoned territory before Grover Cleveland gave them formal permission. They eventually ran all the black bears out of the state and turned it into the futuristic cosmopolitan wonderland it is today.
PICK: SOONERS

dead men chit no chat

2009-02-19T01:54:00.000-07:00

take your stinking paws off the damned dirty apes

2009-02-18T00:31:00.006-07:00

In case there's anyone out there who still isn't unequivocally creeped out by "domesticated" chimpanzees. I haven't gathered the nerve to listen to the embedded audio recording of the 911 call yet. Of course, it's not the chimp's fault, it's the fault of any human who thinks shooting some dumbass E*TRADE commercials is worth the risk of dragging one of those horrid monsters out of the forest in the first place.

Also: is it just me, or is there something bewitching about girls in giant sunglasses and oversized '80s pop art reversible Mickey Mouse sweatshirts? It's probably just me.

V-Day '09

2009-02-14T15:51:00.003-07:00

Luke & Laura

Luke Spencer and Laura Webber Spencer are fictional characters and the signature supercouple from the American daytime drama General Hospital. Despite having been raped by a drunken Luke, Laura would later fall in love with him.

Burt & Linda

He only had eyes for her. She played hard to get. So he hired three men to throw acid in her face, blinding her. Then came the weird twist-- she married him.

Adolf & Eva
Hitler is known to have been opposed to women wearing cosmetics (in part because they were made from animal by-products) and sometimes brought the subject up at mealtime. Heinz Linge (who was his valet) said Hitler once laughed at traces of Braun's lipstick on a napkin and to tease her, joked, "Soon we will have replacement lipstick made from dead bodies of soldiers."

Gary & Tracey
A jealous husband murdered his wife and then killed himself with an electric drill after she told friends on the social networking website Facebook that her marriage was over.

Britney & Michael
She looked at his eyes, now burning with desire, and replied, "Yes..." He removed her clothes slowly. Completely naked, he carried her and drops her on her bed. He gently lay on top of her, wrapped his arms around her waist, and, again, gentlemanly asked, "Shall we dance?" She nodded dreamily and sighed. Her sigh turned into a moan. He echoes her moan and started to make those "sweet seductive little noises" near to her ear. And then...and then...
Britney woke up, sweaty and panting. Her beautiful blond hair was sticking out all over.
"Michael Jackson."
She spoke the name as though it were to be revered.
She couldn't believe she was falling for her best friend...

Oblivion

2009-01-31T12:54:00.000-07:00

finally, a version of Sonic the Hedgehog that you can have sex to

2009-01-27T21:03:00.002-07:00

obobobobamaamaamaama

2009-01-22T22:15:00.001-07:00

Sassy T-Shirt Shoppe

2009-01-22T11:25:00.002-07:00

Everything Is Terrible

2009-01-16T00:59:00.005-07:00

is everything I've ever wanted in a website: obscure, bafflingly idiotic videos from the analog age, thrown into some sort of magical awkward-metaphor rock tumbler and pulled out again as glittering nuggets of psychotropic glee.

Seriously, there is hilarity on every single page. Check it out. (You can maybe skip the deer video from last week. That one was gross and disturbing.)

via WFMU's Beware of the Blog

link party

2009-01-14T09:23:00.002-07:00

Interesting NYT article from a couple weeks back deconstructing the current logjam in getting the already-prepared awesome remastered Beatles album reissues to market. The gist: nobody knows WTF, everyone wants to give Apple Corps. more money but not for a dumbass $400 pen that says "The Beatles" on it. Possibly it's all Yoko's fault. There are also detailed descriptions of great Beatles bootlegs you can get through Bittorrent right now. Seriously. (NYT login required. And if you really don't care about remastered 5.1 Beatles albums with sweet bonus tracks then we have nothing in common.)

Here is an honest-to-God interactive map of Springfield, U.S.A. If Simpsons fanboys faced off against Carl Barks fanboys in a potato sack race, I would be the one firing the starting pistol.

Google tells me it's been a while since I've blathered about viral D.I.Y. comedy video website blahblahblah Channel 101 on this blog, so I'll direct your attention to two of my favorite contributors: Justin Roiland (creator of the infamous House of Cosbys) and his frequent collaborator, demented cartoonist Kelsy Abbott. Kelsy and Justin starred together in 2 Girls 1 Cup: The Show last year and Zen improv experiment Reporters in '07, plus a bunch of other stuff (look for the tiny "view" links in each episode description). The gist: I have an insane crush on Kelsy Abbott. I apologize in advance if you're not into grainy videos with lots of shouting and dick jokes.

That's all for now because my black coffee breakfast is eating a hole in my stomach.

Life After Leno

2009-01-13T12:43:00.000-07:00

Left-Handed Problem

2009-01-12T18:19:00.001-07:00

There is a 90% chance you just wouldn't understand.