Roses are red, the Tacoma Dome is (still) blue…

A flower for the Tacoma Dome

I won’t belabor you with the pros of having Andy Warhol’s “Flower” (that’s a title, not a euphemism) rightfully bestowed on the cap of Tacoma’s famous landmark. Nor will I bore you with yet another historical recap of the previously mentioned submission. You can read about it here and here and here and here and here. I won’t even argue those who say that it would be a waste of money and an eyesore (just know that you are wrong). What I will ask of you is that you take a good hard look at that picture above and tell me you wouldn’t want to see it in real life. After battling unimaginable demons through the freakish hellscape of glass and neon that is the Fife I-5 corridor, I for one would relish an eyeful of pop art. Tell me that it wouldn’t ignite that flicker of hometown pride that resides in the lower cockles of every Tacoman (and Tacwoman). And we all could use a little more joy and whimsy these days.

More renders can be found here and are the property of their respective rights-holders/lein-holders.

I would be remiss if I also missed an opportunity to plug my friends at Beautiful Angle:

A Flower for the Tacoma Dome

And don’t miss Jay-Z and Kanye West, Dec 16th!

Reblogged from the Famous Dave Shumka of Stop Podcasting Yourself fame, about his co-host and abstract beard painter Graham Clark daveshumka: A few weeks ago, my good friend and podcast co-host Graham Clark decided to trim his beard, but he wanted to do something with it first: PAINT! As a guy with no background in visual arts, he had to do some research.  He decided the best way to do paint was to tie off his beard into a brush, à la Captain Lou Albano.  He then had to go through the embarrassing task of asking the clerk at the art store what kind of paint to use.  Then he set to work.  The results are pretty impressive, like if Jackson Pollock were some kind of wolfman. Now he’s selling the paintings on ebay to raise money for his friend to get advanced cancer treatments that aren’t available in this country. Check out the rest of the paintings and bid on them here.

Reblogged from the Famous Dave Shumka of Stop Podcasting Yourself fame, about his co-host and abstract beard painter Graham Clark

daveshumka:

A few weeks ago, my good friend and podcast co-host Graham Clark decided to trim his beard, but he wanted to do something with it first: PAINT!

As a guy with no background in visual arts, he had to do some research.  He decided the best way to do paint was to tie off his beard into a brush, à la Captain Lou Albano.  He then had to go through the embarrassing task of asking the clerk at the art store what kind of paint to use.  Then he set to work.  The results are pretty impressive, like if Jackson Pollock were some kind of wolfman.

Now he’s selling the paintings on ebay to raise money for his friend to get advanced cancer treatments that aren’t available in this country.

Check out the rest of the paintings and bid on them here.

Rethinking the business card

The business card. A chance to leave an impression, to distinguish yourself from the pack, give someone your phone number without having to carry around a pen. As my job doesn’t really require meeting anyone or glad-handing, I’ve been relegated to carrying around social business cards (there HAS to be a better name for these things, but “social cards” just sound like another name for “greeting card.”)

I have an etsy storefront where I sell my printed goods (rkamidees.etsy.com) and I wanted people who bought my art elsewhere to know that they could find some of my art online. I’m really not a printer-for-hire at this time, so I felt free to steer away from the traditional structure of 2”x3” heavyweight matte stock. I started playing with the idea of something that would add to the value of the accompanying art piece, build my brand (Suburban Gutter Anthem), and still point someone back to my storefront.

MoA

I liked the idea of using a certificate of authenticity as my template because the document has become reserved for shitty commemorative plates and painted coins. Things of questionable quality. They don’t really mean much. But as a hand printed piece, I could maybe play off of that reputation. As for incorporating the mustache: it’s Movember and I had a lino carving of a mustache lying around. The idea of a MoA struck me as funny at first, and I ran with it.

The body of text was set in an Engraved Shaded typeface, similar to what is on US currency, which I liked because it betrayed my pithy writing. The title was sent in an English Black, which was a nice play on an Old English typeface.

The final piece was done in three passes. First, the gold border, then the text in black, and finally the mustache in a red-brown. The printing press in the photo below is what’s called a Chandler & Price platen press. It is motor driven but hand-fed.

It was three months from idea to final product, which is more than I would’ve liked to spend on something I’m going to give away for free. But I’m finally done and can move onto my next project. A big thanks to Jessica Spring of Springtide Press, who lets me invade her shop at least once a week, and then holds my hand when I don’t know what I’m doing.

And if you want your very own Mustache of Authenticity, buy something.

I want to confess my immortal and unconditional love for John Campbell(’s work)

If you follow me on Facebook, twitter, last.fm, or just about any other social network web 2.0 microblog, then you will already know that I am a fan of John Campbell’s webcomic, Pictures for Sad Children. I’ve been following his weekly strip since Paul (who is a ghost) tried to get his apartment back. The humor is incessantly bleak and misanthropic, like if Steven Wright only told dead baby jokes. And yet the appeal is that it makes you feel invincible to be able to laugh at terrible things. Like this.

Well, someone else has seen Campbell’s talent and decided to give him his own art show. The work was monochromatic, like the strip, and still contained that dark awkward hopelessness.

I’ll admit that maybe it is possible that I find a lot of myself in Campbell’s work; I can relate. But the universality of the sentiments cannot be denied. Who hasn’t had these nagging thoughts that everything is sad and terrible and hopeless? But who among us has the courage to speak it aloud. Okay, I’m getting hyperbolic. Let me leave you with one of my favorite PFSC strips:

find John Campbell here, and here, and here

"He thought the world’s heart beat at some terrible cost and that the world’s pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of the multitudes might be exacted for the vision of a single flower."
— Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece, All the Pretty Horses
Meet @daveshumka

@daveshumka

meet @daveshumka, your new favorite twooter. (previously)

the art of Chad Hagen

I don’t normally post items of art and design. I digest quite a bit on the subject so I know that the internet has enough voices on the subject, but I found about a certain visual artist through the aggregator blog NOTCOT that I felt warranted another word.

Chad Hagen’s infographics are what got him a plug on the site, but I found his Historical Fragments to be the most intriguing. He took some famous imagery and pixelated the most iconic parts of it, lending it a look of something censored or unfinished. It reminds me of things coming into focus or something that is still loading or processing. This is further explored through the addition of dates into the pieces. This Abe Lincoln isn’t my favorite but follow the links and check out the rest of his portfolio.

Honest Abe

link (via NOTCOT.org)

Jack Was a Jolly Bear

The Tacoma Hotel was a famous destination for those traveling West at the turn of the century. It was the city’s crown jewel; a point of pride to the citizenry and something to write home about (see Kipling, Twain, and Muir).

The Tacoma

One of the most famous residents of the hotel was a 700-lb grizzly bear named Jack. Jack’s story is the stuff of legend in Tacoma. Jack was a drinker, and a social drunk at that. He escaped regularly but never attacked anyone. And then one evening he was shot by a rookie cop walking his beat. I found a lot of adjectives attached to the stories of Jack, like “beloved,” “jolly,” “popular.” Though in all my research, not once did the word “abused” appear.

I’m hoping to print a broadside tribute to Jack, so I searched through miles of microfilm in the Tacoma Public Library’s Northwest Room (an amazing resource for history buffs). I was hoping to find some eulogies that may have been published in memory of the “beloved” mascot. Instead I found lighthearted accounts of abuse and neglect. It was a disheartening discovery. Though it may not be much of a surprise that animal rights wasn’t a hot-button issue in the 1890’s. The newspaper mentioned how often he was provoked by his “admiring audience,” who threw tin cans and birdshot at him.

I first found Jack in a photograph in a book of historical photos of downtown Tacoma. He was hanging off of a perch that looked like it was built for a giant parrot. The Ledger revealed that Jack hated that post because he once fell off of it and almost broke his neck. So the only way to get him up there would be to chase him with a wheelbarrow, so the perch would be his only place of refuge.

All of this news was pretty difficult to read, but I found that even the fabled memorial service was not what it seemed. After Jack was shot, he survived for another day in pain before the taxidermist came and put him out of his misery. Jack’s hide was mounted, and the meat was donated to the butcher who put on a free barbecue for the city. None of this was quite what I expected to find. Sometimes a fable is just that because the truth is unpalatable in the context of today. I can’t help but draw parallels to Jack the bear, and Ivan the gorilla. At least Ivan got a second chance at a better life, and nobody ate him.

I didn’t search much more into where the stuffed Jack ended up. The Tacoma Hotel burned to the ground in 1935, and I assume, Jack along with it.

So many words lost to the fire
but none so mourned as those
dedicated to a beloved drunk
stumbling down South A Street
Deserving of a more noble death
than to be shot in the neck
by a rookie cop who did not know
what else to do on that night
about a 700-lb. grizzly bear
(they should have stuffed him along with you)
I will write a new poem for you, Jack
as soon as I finish my drink.

Kind of Bloop: An 8-Bit Tribute to Miles Davis' Kind of Blue

This sounds exactly how you would expect it to sound. But I’m torn.

Kind of Blue has my second favorite jazz album (I’m more of a Coltrane guy myself, so Blue Train comes in 1st) but I like my 8-bit music only in certain forms: specifically, Mega Man themes.

halfway to what?

It’s 10 a.m. and I’ve just reached a milestone on my journey through Infinite Jest. I’ve just passed page 500, which is halfway through the book. (Technically, if you don’t count the endnotes halfway was around 10 pages back. Although the book is actually 1079 pgs. so—counting the endnotes—I still have almost 40 pages to go.)

Pg. 500 doesn’t really have an inherent payoff associated with it like the previous 100/200/300 pages. (Imagine if someone told you at the start, “just make it to page 500 and everything will start to make sense.”) And my mild OCD wishes that there was some sort of break right in page 500 that allows me to close the book up, and meditate on how far I’ve come while staring off pensively into the middle distance. Though I don’t feel as attached to the story as much as I think I should be at the halfway point. Kevin Guilfoile elucidated my feelings in his recent post on Infinite Summer:

Keep Coming Back because It Works.

Just like D. Gately, I’ve stopped trying to understand “Why?”—after half a thousand pages—I’m still to putting in the time and the effort. The motions are almost becoming second nature. I can flip to the relevant endnote without missing a page and I almost don’t need to reference p. 223, the timeline having been engraved into my cortex. And that’s not to say that I’m not actively enjoying the read, because I am, immensely. And dammit, I kind of regret trying to rationalize the liberation of my free time like a desperate Geoffery Day. But if there is one character in the book that I can truly empathize with, it’s Burt F. Smith.

If you recall (I don’t expect everyone to), B. Smith is the quad-amputee Ennet House resident who lost his limbs to frostbite after being mugged on Xmas Eve. Being the sappy lug that I am, I get choked up whenever the narrator describes Smith trying to do anything (e.g. smoke). But what really smacked me in the head was when he tackled one of Don Gately’s meals:

“Burt F. Smith always rolls his eyes with pleasure and makes yummy noises whenever he can get a fork to his mouth.”

I picture Burt fumbling to keep the the fork in between his smooth, round stumps. Ending up with just as much Cream of Chicken pasta on his pants as he does in his gut. But he’s grateful nonetheless.

We’ve all jumped a few hurdles to get to this halfway point. The first thing that I’m sure comes to mind is the infamous endnote #24 (I found endnotes #110 and #123 to not be picnics/walks in the park either, my disinterest in global politics notwithstanding). We’ve had to keep a rotating cast of hundreds of characters organized in our heads (don’t make fun, but it took me longer than it should have to realize that Helen Steeply isn’t Hugh Steeply’s wife). And again, I’ll reference the physical burden it’s been just to keep the weighty tome (shit, was that from Californication?) by my side at all times, which is the only part of this experience that feels like a real chore.

I’ll admit that I’ve read this book in all sorts of states (I’m embarrassed to reveal that I read the transcript of Tennis and the Feral Prodigy [pg. 172] while I was drunk. My penance was to re-read that section the following morning, hungover and without the aid of Excedrin). I’ve distractedly fingered tens of pages in a busy coffee shop (I envy those of you who can read in places like that). I’ve even put the book down several times to tweet (without the #infsum hashtag) and not gone right back to it. Seeing that five and two zeros now is like sitting at a red light and coming to the realization that I don’t remember driving the last five miles. But making it this far is still gratifying, even if I may have missed some landmarks on the trip.

And Burt F. Smith’s clumsy stumps keep flickering into my mind. Every time I lifted IJ to my face, I felt uncoordinated. After the first 20 pages, I was never was quite prepared to pick up where I left off. I soon had to accept the fact that I was going to end up with bits and crumbs of the story in my lap. But I kept going at it. Because when I was able to get my maw around this story, it was good. I mean, really good.

This is the first book I’ve read where the ending really isn’t where I’m trying to get to anyway. Just as I’m sure Burt isn’t trying to clean his plate. We’re both trying to get as much in us as we can. At least enough to survive another 500 pages.

Please pardon the yummy noises.

1 of 5
Themed by: Hunson