miley CyrVS

I'm waiting in line to pick up my prescriptions at CVS.  Ahead of me is an old man, hunched up, over, and against the counter, taking his time to buy his medications.

Like many old people, this man's body has been permanently bent, perhaps from fatigue, injury, or years of ill posture.  He is a stocky, short, obtuse angle, bent forward at the ass.

I am at least 10ft behind him, and because he's taking too long, I'm watching him impatiently.  He's leaning on the counter, the weight of his body supported by his hands.  He is confused, asking the employee whether he has all of his medications.  And because I am directly behind him, his rumpa looks especially prominent, aimed as it were, directly at me.

I also notice, that he has a strong tremor.  His entire body is shaking as he rests against the counter.  This tremor shakes his entire frame, including his slightly-too-prominent bottom.

And that's when I realize this old man, with his bent frame and tremor, is twerking.  Tremor-twerking, ass out, in a CVS.

---

Refracted back at me, in an old man's ass, was the blinding glare of (miley)nnial excess.

I was dying of laughter inside.  Talk about surreal.

Frank Sinatra

Classic track from Miss Kittin and the Hacker.
 

Laid Back - Fly Away

Schmaltzy, but still tasteful 80's track.  Heard it on one of the Foolcast podcasts.  Listening to it now as I draw.

006: Alcatraz

Found images, cropped to square format.

Sun God 2014: Fuck you Diplo

Diplo headlined UCSD's annual Sun God festival this year.  I don't blame the event staff, but he did a terrible job.

You know a DJ is in trouble when his intro bumper is the best part of his set.

When he got on stage, 'DIPLO' lit up in 20 foot letters on the three screens behind him as a computer voice chanted his name.  The drums were building, and the BPM was growing.  Then came a single promising drop.

 What followed this 'banger' intro, was crap.  Diplo couldn't play a single full track; he kept switching tracks every minute---never played anything through--no real drops, no real commitment to any song.  It was ADD music--an endless introduction that never took you anywhere, more an exercise in mixing (Diplo showing off) than anything else.  He could only hold the crowd for seconds at a time, but it didn't seem to bother him.  Fuck you Diplo.

A friend of mine took this picture.  Fuck you Diplo

Luckily the event staff dropped a ton of inflatable blow-up balls onto the crowds.  This made the set more enjoyable, since it was temporarily no longer about the music.  I still left early.

The problem with Diplo was that he was acting like a superstar, and not performing like one.  I prefer my DJ's humble--and I believe all musicians should put their music first.  Diplo, with his good looks and vapid stage performance seemed to enjoy the ego-jerk more than anything else.  His music did nothing for me.  He was on race to mix as many banger, big name tracks as he could in that short hour--playing each track just long enough for recognition, before moving on.  It was hollow, forced, and didn't spark the [eager] crowd.  I hate dumping hate, but it was just so unsatisfying--like eating a Safeway cake, or reading a free newspaper--that I can't help it.

-----

ASCE should invite an intelligent, no-nonsense DJ like Machinedrum to headline next year.  Machinedrum delivers.  He's amazing live.

Tijuana Minimalist

I love Tijuana.  I was ambivalent the first time I visited, but last night was excellent.  $30 gets you a night of fun, and all the drinking you can ask for.  Had street tacos, went to four bars, a craft brewery, and had awesome American-style hamburgers, and then hit a mustache-themed nightclub, where Macaulay Caulkin apparently hangs out.

Anyways, while going to the bathroom in the burger joint, I saw this circuit breaker box in the place where the mirror should be.  What an amazing level of trust they must have in their customers.  For a second I was tempted to mess with the switches, but instead, being the sentimental art-fag I am, I thought to myself: "what a nice composition."

Should've framed it better, but when you're buzzed, you're buzzed; in that sense, the crookedness of the shot is fitting.  Tijuana minimalist.

Jeff Ramirez: Ultimate Hotdog

Jeff Ramirez is an excellent photorealistic painter who studied painting at UCSC and currently lives and works in LA.  We're friends on facebook, and he's a cool dude.  He gave me advice when I was still freaking out about living as an artist.  This was back when I still thought I wanted to do art full time.  He doesn't even do art full time.  I think he splits his time between art and tech.

Anyway, his art has many motifs, but i've never seen any quite like his most recent painting.   It surfaced in my newsfeed this morning.  What is it?  It's a dystopian 90's nightmare--some kind of bowling alley rape fantasy straight out of Middle America.

"Celebration"
2014
16" x 20"

I still feel violated by it.   It's a kind of violence.  Elegant, but totally repulsive, and stuffed with allegory.  Allegory and hotdogs.

It might be a commentary on the sexual mores of White America.

It's genius.  I should buy it.   Maybe I'll tell him to make prints.

NY Post Website

I don't know about the quality of their news, but man oh man is the NY Post's website ever sexy.  Simple color scheme, clean layout, bold logo.  It looks remarkably alive, and has all the urgency you would expect of a 24/7 online news site based out of New York.  I like the graphic quality of the header; it reminds me of classic comic book fonts, and the minimalist approach is quite nice.

[The crappy articles] are at least, very easy to navigate.

Asian Squat

While riding the Hoang Express back to San Diego, my bus stopped at a gas station along the Grapevine for a quick break.  I discreetly snapped this picture of one of my fellow passengers doing a textbook Asian Squat--though I unfortunately caught him at the tail end.  He's getting up here, but he was actually much lower.

What is the Asian squat?  This article explains it decently enough.  I've tried many times, but always fail.  

GoPro Surrealist

If this is viral marketing, it's exceptionally well done.  If it isn't, its an amazing series of events.  Beautiful in either case.  

Wet Hands // Bad Designs

Whoever designed this specific brand* of paper towel dispenser should be cursed with permanently wet hands.  They fathered an atrocity.  If you've ever used one, you will know.

Fuck this thing

These damn things always get stuck--they stop feeding out the towels.  To unstuck them you have to try un-jamming it with a small, plastic turn wheel that is inconveniently recessed in the plastic housing of the dispenser.  Most of the time, with your wet fingers and the machine's temperamental feed mechanism, you have no chance of budging it.  Even a person with relatively strong hands and fingers like myself has no chance.  Imagine the fun a person with arthritis must have trying to operate this.

Returning to the design, not only is the savior-wheel awkwardly placed, but it has nothing to firmly grip onto.  But even if it did, the wheel itself is so small--about two inches in diameter--that you have practically zero leverage.  Given that you only use the wheel when paper is stuck, the idea that you're gonna budge a jammed feed mechanism with wet hands, no grip and no leverage is absurd.

Nobody should have to titty-twister a paper towel dispenser, hoping they might actually get one.

When I use these things, I would generously estimate that they work half the time.  Now you might be thinking "it's no big deal--it's just a paper towel...#firstworldproblems."  But however small it is, it's enough to make someone's day just a little bit worse--to fire off some anger neurons.  And if fourty people using a public bathroom grapple with the same jammed dispenser, that adds up.  It's a lot of small disappointments to feed into the collective conscious--for no good reason.

----
*It's a "Sanitouch" by Kimberly Clark

Blow

At once

the air goes sour--

a metallic flash 

radiates nausea

down your spine, 

as

the alkali salts 

burn and fizzle--

waning slowly,
the caustic electricity 

leaves your sinuses
stinging
in a cloud of
iron bitterness.