Well, it’s The Day After Earth Day and I think I speak for everyone when I say THANK GOD we can all go back to throwing trash out of our windows again. YES!!! Oh wait… you don’t do that?

Um, oh I just found out about this cool site called Free Music Archive and it’s great because they have very reliable music nerds who curate collections of quality music that you might not know about. Anyway, WFMU, the best listener-supported public radio station in the entire universe has a site and I highly recommend checking it out. WFMU put on a showcase in SXSW that I briefly attended only to meet the program director and sadly missed the Obits set. But it’s up on there too! I know documenting everything can sometimes bite you you in the ass, but most of the time I’m grateful this modern phenomenon exists so that I never miss a moment of value.

Speaking of Obits, “Fake Kinkade”, an angry and loud song about being duped into buying a forged Thomas Kinkade painting is my new Happy Place when I am under stress. I really don’t know how to explain why without sounding pretentious. Just a warning, I am about to get hardcore nerdy about why this song is so beautiful and powerful to me primarily because I can’t remember the last time modern music moved me this way. Have a listen:

I’m not sure if you are familiar with the artist Thomas Kinkade but you’ve probably seen his stuff everywhere and not realized it.

Check the wikipedia entry

Thomas Kinkade (born January 19, 1958 in Sacramento, California) is an American painter of realistic, bucolic, and idyllic subjects. He is notable for the mass marketing of his work as printed reproductions and other licensed products via The Thomas Kinkade Company. He is self described as “Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light” (a trademarked phrase), and as “America’s most-collected living artist”.[1] It is estimated that 1 in 20 homes in the U.S. feature some form of Thomas Kinkade’s art, according to Media Arts, the publicly-traded company that licenses and sells his products. He has received criticism for the extent to which he has commercialized his art — for example, selling his prints on the QVC home shopping network. Others have written that his paintings are merely kitsch, without substance,[2] and described it as chocolate box art.[3]

Not only do I not relate to his subjects but he is a highly successful commercial artist who manufactures prints on canvas with technology made to look like original real oil paintings. I’m not as much of a cynic or misanthrope these days but when I see his paintings of glowing country gardens and serene dewy pastures in pastel hues I think to myself, What a beautiful lie. He is a business man who has a natural talent for painting. But there is no soul within those brushstrokes and his artwork seems vacant to me—from the moment the vision was born to the factory where it was made thousands of times over by machine and not man.

So why does this angry & loud song give me peace? Because I can appreciate the beauty in achieving clarity from jarring, ugly realizations. The best and deepest smarts you can attain don’t come from school, but I think from rough and painful life experiences. It’s a new kind of freedom and level of understanding that one can only really earn by sacrifice and upsetting means. And the narrator of “Fake Kinkade” invested in something believed to be authentic, only to later realize he was fooled “by a forger in a foreign country I don’t like.” It’s a great revelation, at least to me, because I have never considered that the artist could simultaneously by the forger. And it has my favorite combination in song-writing: visceral/blistering/controlled chaos sounding with angular guitars and angsty vocals, but the lyrics are cerebral, meaningful and downright poetic:

As a person who has an unhealthy obsession with Americana, I love that this song can satisfy that fetish while showing a darker side of the white picket fence. One in 20 homes in America have a Thomas Kinkade print?! It’s a smart but not so obvious or obnoxious metaphor for dissing systematic herd mentality, inauthentic & mass produced “inspiration” and escapism in America all within a succinct 3 minutes. And although I am for the most part very content with my life, indulge in escapist entertainment every now and then and have material desires myself, I never forget that my deepest bonds with people is usually based on the common idea of being very suspicious of people who appear to be happy all the time. Why? For that to be possible in any lifetime, either they are so sheltered or sedentary that they have never, ever encountered a harrowing challenge or worse, it’s a bullshit facade. And Thomas Kinkade paintings are the perfect iconic symbol of being happy all the time. It’s such profound and brutal commentary but done in the best creative way ever. I hate it when ideas I agree with are too heavy-handed and beat me over the head in a self-righteous manner. So in conclusion, um, this song is FUCKNG GREAT!!!

//photo by grebo guru

This deserves a separate post because the Devo panel and show at the Austin Music Hall will go down as one of my most fond and epicly entertaining memories, not just of South By Southwest, but as someone who has had a lifelong obsession with music and the stories behind it. I’ve admired Mark Mothersbaugh for a long time and think of him as a visionary, not to mention one of the most endearing and interesting oddballs in pop culture history.

When I was in high school, there was one issue of Mean Magazine that had a feature on him and it came with an insert of about 100 miniature stickers of his comical visual art. I had no idea at the time that he was actually a pretty gifted visual artist. Check out his amusing website of his works. My appreciation for him continued to grow through the years. For instance recently, I read that he is legally blind without his glasses. The story is that when he went to the optometrist as a 7 year old and received his first pair of glasses, he saw for the very first time “smoke from chimneys and birds.” After truly seeing and “experiencing” the world for the first time, he was inspired to illustrate. That same night he had dreamed of being a famous artist. That anecdote is so profoundly touching to me and adds another fascinating dimension to his already inherently interesting personality (How the f*** did this music come out of Akron, Ohio?). Strangely enough, Jerry Casale and Mothersbaugh met at Kent State around the time the government was shooting students and snuck around making music and films together when the campus shut down and curfews were in order.

Aside from the arty stuff, he’s a really damn good composer and did the theme for Pee Wee’s Playhouse and a gang of scores for movies, including the Wes Anderson movies like Rushmore, Royal Tennenbaums, etc etc. Anyway, blah blah blah so there’s a little background information on why I adore this spazzy renaissance man so much.

So I wanted to hear him talk as part of the Devo panel for SXSW. Surprisingly, he was soft spoken — almost shy– while Jerry did most of the promo talking (and trash talking). I’ve seen photos of Mothersbaugh present day during Devo shows as a 58 year old man in full hazmat get up and energy dome hat and couldn’t help but shake my head. Before going to this show at the Austin Music Hall I didn’t know what to expect. I was excited but I also was a little worried that I might feel embarrassed for these old dudes not being able to pull off this foolishness that they were known for as young ones. Not to mention they were playing at midnight (way too late for old guys to be rocking out) and after Tricky too, how weird is that? I knew this show would be surreal, but I was hoping it would be the kind of surreal that was intended.

crowd at Austin Music Hall anticipating old dudes in hazmat suits

After Tricky nearly puts me to sleep, gyrating and trying to rock-out to unfortunately mid-tempo repetitious tracks with a pseudo-Martina on vocals, It’s finally time for Devo to come out at midnight. The set begins with a huge screen in the backdrop scrolling absurd and amusing visuals of Devo’s long history and the audience is getting hyped. They come out in the worksuits to a new song called Don’t Shoot with a hilarious animated video highlighting the song’s theme (the outro of the song is “Don’t tase me, bro!” over and over). It’s at that point I realize the entire concert is going to have these amazing visuals synced with the live music and I knew it was going to be highly entertaining and nothing like I’ve ever seen before. So brilliant! Mothersbaugh’s vocals were perfect all night, and they all performed and did routines with the energy and theatrics of men in their 20s… for one and a half hours. For the encore Mothersbaugh came out as Booji Boy, sang Beautiful World in falsetto, and played this custom circuit bent synth instrument that was molded onto a tennis racket and had a toy duck head sticking out at the end of the neck. At the very end, he pulls down his pants and all these super balls come spilling out. He grabs hand fulls and bounces them into the audience. Remember those rubber balls you got for a quarter in the grocery store machine? In no time, these super balls are bouncing all over within the audience and the music hall. The audience was going CRAZY.

Mothersbaugh as Booji Boy //photo by grebo guru

When the show was over I was filled with a kind of satisfaction i can only describe as childlike joy. Devo’s amusing antics were contagious and convincing and still makes me smile when I think about it. What makes me even more happy is that now that they have a full time drummer (Josh Freese) they will tour instead of playing these intermittent shows in places I will never be. The new songs they debuted were great, and I’ll show a video of one they played down below. There are a lot of current bands obviously inspired by that sound, but they lack the absurdity/ fun in subversive commentary and satire. Now with the poor state of things and infrastructures crumbling left and right, Devo’s idea of “De-Evolution” is more relevant than ever and I am grateful they are still doing their thing. Mothersbaugh and Co’s live show is the equivalent of attending an eternal pizza party when the rest of the world is on the brink of apocalypse and you have no choice but to feel joy and laugh in the face of tragedy. The day he stops being awesome is a day I hope I never see. He gives me hope and optimism in growing old.

two videos from the show. sorry, these clips aren’t high fidelity – loud drums and bass are impossible to capture with a point and shoot camera.

We had a gathering of food and drink at my friend Elias’s house to welcome Corey to San Francisco. Serg got a pork shoulder from that La Gallinita butcher shop in the Mission (the one with the pigs cooking pigs artwork painted outside) He smoked it for 7+ hours for pulled pork sliders and it was delicious. I was put in charge of decorations so I printed cutouts of those joyous cannibal pigs and stuck up where ever there was blank space on walls. Sorry to my vegetarian readers for the offensive imagery, but cannibal pigs artwork on butcher shops is just too absurd and amusing to me. I also hit up the mission dollar stores and got random flags of mexico, puerto rico and argentina as well as party balloons/streamers. Good times, you can read Serg’s recap on Grocery Eats

After an afternoon full of drinking, food and rock band dorkery the evening reached new levels of retardation as it usually does when Elias hosts a food & drink party at his house. I don’t know whose idea it was, I think maybe Lydia, but it was decided that The Many Facets of Roger album cover needed to be recreated and I was put in charge of photo and art direction. Too bad we forgot to take the sheet down for the back cover.

My 2008 is now archived in whirlwind ADHD form. Damn, I really effed up by picking a 2 minute song to try to cram all those photos into, and sadly ended up using only a fraction of all the ones i picked out. I forgot a bunch of important stuff like election funnery too. Maybe i will do a part 2.

The 5th Annual Tamale Day was epic this year. Lots of tamales, beer, the de la Hoya/Pacquiao fight on PPV, Rock Band funnery, and quality time with good folks. After most had left, somebody an idea to deep fry a tamale and the night had officially reached Level: JackAss. I watched as dudes proceeded to deep fry random things they could think of such as cookie dough, rum balls and a serrano chile pepper. Str8 comedy. Many thanks to Serg and EJ for putting this together as usual.

Yeah I teared up last night with strangers and friends in a packed bar during Obama’s acceptance speech. As you may know, I was so excited that I crashed my bike because I was distracted by the communal bliss in my neighborhood. I never thought I would live to see a black POTUS and not only is that a huge achievement in itself, but a black democratic candidate who could carry Florida and Virginia. WTF? I took a long hiatus from ranting about politics because I get so riled up and because I became so cynical and disgusted with the Rove-era of corruption/scandal and how the perpetrators, for the most part, had a slimy talent for wiggling out scott-free. I never imagined that I could feel so proud of my country. Even though I am still wary of campaign promises, I am very impressed with his stature and personal ascension and see in him someone who inspires hope not just for the US, but for our global community. Even Condoleeza Rice could not hide being pleased and I had forgotten that one of her childhood friends was killed in that bombing of a baptist church in Birmingham, AL in 1963.

But I have to confess, despite his hostile supporters booing his calls for uniting behind Obama, I was touched by McCain’s concession speech and felt really bad for him.

Back during his rally when he was calming and correcting that woman with the crazy hair who said “I’m afraid of Obama he’s an arab”, the look on his face was so obviously conflicted and even he appeared to be shaken by the hatred and ignorance that his negative campaign had spread. When not in election mode, he seemed a decent person to me and has proved in the past to be a rare breed of politicians that would extend an olive branch to break free from political gridlock to get things done. Last night, I saw signs that he would continue that again.

But yeah, he and his clueless campaign strategists made some epic bad decisions though—on a Faustian level by a) hiring the same folks who smeared him ruthlessly in the 2000 primaries and b) selecting Bible Spice as his veep. I don’t think he will ever forget that. I can’t help but think of that line from JFK’s inauguration speech:

“Those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.”

Rings so freaking true.

My costume is finished!

I’m Bjork when she wore that dead swan dress to the Oscars a few years ago. Now all I need is a baby to carry around with me and I’ll punch anyone who tries to take a picture of me.

right arrow to advance pic (sorry there’s so many)

las vegas, bingo, more county fairin, eating drinking, beach housing (right arrow to advance)

this is almost too embarassing to share but it also makes me laugh like a maniac in my head. i was on my friend’s roof the other nite to enjoy some fresh air which unintentionally turned into us “playing Rear Window”. we noticed that there was a quiet party in one of the windows directly across and in a half drawn shaded window next door, 2 sets of extremely large bare calves in athletic ankle socks were pacing around the floor closely, possibly about to get down. lights out, no action. we kept talking about how these were the biggest calves we’d ever seen and tried to figure out which ones belonged to a man or a woman, or whether they were same-sex calves. i proceed to take pictures of a few buildings because the lighting is ethereal at that hour in cameraland.

anyway, the next day i take a look at the pictures and in one of them, something seems a little off.

i’m getting a weird vibe looking at it. i zoom in closer, and oh my god! i think there is a guy in there.

and oh my god, he’s staring right at me. looking all retired porno actor in a robe with nothing underneath? could it be? this dude is MY personal Raymond Burr. and it was around 1:30am so it seemed a majority of the neighbors were asleep. seemed.

haha! just when you think you’re alone, there is a naked dude in a robe quietly staring at you.

yesterday i had lunch with coworkers outside the ferry building. somehow pirates came up in the conversation and i mentioned there are pirates today still but they sport ak-47s instead of swords. i had to leave early to get back to work and on the walk back, i see a freaking PIRATE SHIP in the bay. On top of that, i heard explosions that sounded like cannons.

back at the office, i told everyone that i saw a pirate ship firing cannons in the bay and NOBODY believe me. “audrey i think you had too much wine” “sure there was a pirate ship”. i barely even had one glass of wine.

so this morning one of my coworkers comes by with the SF Chronicle and lo and behold, my “imaginary” pirate ship is on the front page of the paper with a caption about it firing cannons.

VINDICATED, BITCHES!

right arrow to advance to next pic

when my camera battery died in big sur i started relying on my phone camera as backup. then i remembered the panoramic stitch function on my phone camera which was made for trips like this. click each image for the big picture

finally got around to making that Slap Shot fan-art T i said i would a month or 2 back. it’s a little messed up since i used iron-on transfer but i’m gonna make a better one in the near future and hopefully find a tomboy nerd who can appreciate a hilarious & subversive dudestravagent violent hockey flick from the 70s, give it to her and make her day. excuse the mediocre pic, young took it.

damn, so sorry for all these pics. these aren’t even all of them, i uploaded almost 500 to my flickr account. as you may know i was in nyc the past 2 weeks. the first week hermilo and i subletted a studio apartment in the lower east side for a fake honeymoon, the second week i stayed in brooklyn with my friend uyen. saw just blaze, chris rock as a surprise guest in a small comedy club, bobbito @ apt, the natural history museum, ate at difara’s pizza (legendary), danced to danny krivit, ate at red hook, secret key lime joints, went to the DUMBO arts fest, fished in the atlantic. i had a blast.

sfo at the breakadawn

flying over my bornstate

herm & drew at APT for just blaze

drew has a ghostface

these girls were feeling it

senor swanky looks like a vampire

danny krivit @ the hudson hotel

mr. krivit played rackords

this woman in the lobby was wearing a carcass of somesort

hudson lobby chandelier

lynchian escalator

at the museum of natural history

i need chapstick

@ red hook

heading out to matt’s neck of the woods for a fishing trip

ah, the ny post

matt caught a 2-foot eel that was mean

this fish had wings and legs

sandshark!

me being sea sick

me pretending not to be sea sick

preparing for dinner @ matt’s

tom showing matt a pic of him with a black eye

LIRR back to brooklyn

the verizon building across from my friend’s has no windows

i’m scared that when i get back, i’m going to post 500 pictures in one entry so here are more