September 02, 2006
What I've Been Doing
Jewelry design (?!?)
Posted by hissycat at 02:07 PM | Comments (3)
April 12, 2006
Punk Rock Librarian
This article from the NYT is brimming with my favorites: lesbians, archives, librarians, low-brow ephemera. Barnard librarian Jenna Freedman, who is quite clearly the most awesome person on earth, has spearheaded the college's scholarly collection and new digital catalogue of zines. You can check out what Barnard has online here.
Posted by hissycat at 12:01 AM | Comments (27)
March 17, 2006
Better Hipsterkeeping
Posted by hissycat at 01:04 PM | Comments (2)
March 07, 2006
Painter of Light: A Portrait of Darkness (or, "Codpiece! Codpiece!")
I have always suspected that Thomas Kincaid is a fountainhead of pure, unbridled evil, but now I finally, finally have confirmation. If you are lucky enough to live in America and not know of Thomas Kincaid, he is the "painter of light" whose overpriced Christian schlock sells in, I think, malls, but also, like Pebble Beach and wherever else rich, white people without an aesthetic bone in their body can be found purchasing mass-reproduced "art" to match their wall-to-wall to carpeting. The best way I can describe Thomas Kincaid paintings is: imagine Oprah eating Dr. Phil, a Madame Alexander doll, an evangelical mega-church complete with Power-Point sermon, 839,459 Pixie Stix, then vomiting all that up into a gold-leaf frame and swishing so it will cake into vomity swirls of texture as it hardens. That's what his paintings look like. See:
But now the jig is up! According to the LA Times "Some former Kinkade employees, gallery operators and others contend that the Painter of Light has a decidedly dark side." It goes on about fraud and, I don't know, maybe money laundering, and all sorts of bad things, and blah di blah blah blah blah. "A three-member panel of the American Arbitration Assn. ordered his company to pay $860,000 for defrauding the former owners of two failed Virginia galleries." Right, whatever. This is the shit I live for:
It's not just Kinkade's business practices that have been called into question. Former gallery owners, ex-employees and others say his personal behavior also belies the wholesome image on which he's built his empire.
In sworn testimony and interviews, they recount incidents in which an allegedly drunken Kinkade heckled illusionists Siegfried & Roy in Las Vegas, cursed a former employee's wife who came to his aid when he fell off a barstool, and palmed a startled woman's breasts at a signing party in South Bend, Ind.
And then there is Kinkade's proclivity for "ritual territory marking," as he called it, which allegedly manifested itself in the late 1990s outside the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim.
"This one's for you, Walt," the artist quipped late one night as he urinated on a Winnie the Pooh figure, said Terry Sheppard, a former vice president for Kinkade's company, in an interview.
The article goes on for a while about how Kincaid (someone stop me) paints himself as an upstanding Christian before coming back to elaborate on the Sigfriend & Roy incident-- even though you already know about that-- because it is just soo bizarre.
In testimony and interviews with The Times, Sheppard and other former employees said they often went with Kinkade to strip clubs and bars, where he frequently became intoxicated and out of control.
John Dandois, Media Arts Group's senior director of retail operations from 1995 to 1999, testified in a hearing that the artist was a sort of Jekyll-and-Hyde character, whose behavior worsened as the alcohol flowed.
"Thom would be fine, he would be drinking, and then all of a sudden, you couldn't tell where the boundary was," he said. "And then he became very incoherent, and he would start cussing and doing a lot of weird stuff."
Dandois, who left the company to become chief executive of a group of galleries owned by Kinkade's brother, Patrick, recounted that about six years ago the artist was so intoxicated during a performance by Siegfried & Roy in Las Vegas that people seated nearby moved away from him.
"I think it was Roy or Siegfried or whatever had a codpiece in his leotards," Dandois testified. "And so when the show started, Thom just started yelling, 'Codpiece, codpiece,' and had to be quieted by his mother and Nanette."
This is really too much. I think I broke my lung.
In an interview, Sheppard, who often accompanied Kinkade on the road, recounted a trip to Orange County in the late 1990s for the artist's appearance on the "Hour of Power" television show at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove. On the eve of the broadcast, Sheppard said, he and Kinkade returned to the Disneyland Hotel after a night of heavy drinking. As they walked to their rooms, according to Sheppard and another person who was there, Kinkade veered toward a nearby figure of a Disney character.
"Thom wanders over to Winnie the Pooh and decides to 'mark his territory,' " Sheppard told The Times.
In a deposition, the artist alluded to his practice of urinating outdoors, saying he "grew up in the country" where it was common. When pressed about allegedly relieving himself in a hotel elevator in Las Vegas, Kinkade said it might have happened.
"There may have been some ritual territory marking going on, but I don't recall it," he said.
Posted by hissycat at 06:15 AM | Comments (21) | TrackBack
February 19, 2006
Paperback Of The Week
What I love about this cover is just how goofy this "dance of desire" is. Like, here, let me express my ravenous hunger for your body by flapping my elbows in the air like a woozy pigeon. I'll sort of march in place to demonstrate the fire that burns in my loins. Then I hold up pieces of my hair and pretend I have horns. 'Cause I'm horny. For you, baby. Oh, and I cross my eyes, too. This is The Dance Of Desire.
Look, her lover's so whipped up she got tangled in the sheet. I mean, look at her! It's like she tried to do the dance, but she wasn't woman enough. The Dance of Desire! It'll get her, oh boy oh boy. Look at that stupified grin-- totally defenless against the hair horns of desire. Putty in her lover's hands.
By the by, I bought some new (old) pulps today from some dude who was selling them on the street. Very exciting.
Posted by hissycat at 06:08 PM | Comments (11)
February 17, 2006
Awesome
This totally goes in the guest bathroom:
I think I'll go e-mail this picture to my mom now. She's into home repair projects, and this is exactly the kind of thing she finds rib-ticklingly funny-- she and my dad, in fact, should get seconds of laughs out of this one. That's just the kind of people they are.
You know what word sounds extremeley filthy out loud? Spigot.
Posted by hissycat at 07:51 PM | Comments (1)
February 07, 2006
Paperback Of The Week
My sincerest apologies for the delay.
Posted by hissycat at 04:07 PM | Comments (5)
January 28, 2006
Paperback Of The Week
The exceptionally bad cover art mini-series continues.
Posted by hissycat at 01:18 PM | Comments (7237)
January 16, 2006
Paperback Of The Week
Posted by hissycat at 12:42 PM | Comments (17)
December 18, 2005
Photoshop + CSS + JoJo = BFF's 4-Eva
Now all it needs is some content and its golden! What, you don't want to read a 100+ undergrad English thesis in its entirety? It'll be a gas, I swear it! Some fun you are.
Also, you know what really sucks big time? You know how sometimes you piss away two months in bed, chewing your hair and procrasturbating through an entirely thoughtless, reptilian existance, and then you're not depressed, and all of a sudden, there are a katrillion things you realize you want to do-- write a book! make stop-motion animation with k-biz! create a small replica of the Tower of London rendered in Shrinky-Dink!-- but now the world's all, oh, hey Joanna, you're feeling a little bit not morbidly depressed, are you? Well, fuck you, sister-- now you've got to change the cat's litter, and pay your psychaitrist's bills, and visit your angry parents, and get another awful job to go to and work and eat any time you might want for writing or reading novels or maki the cat fall off furniture or Shrinky-Dinking paperbacks until, once again, suicide seems a really, really attractive alternative? You know what I mean, don't you? That kind of really sucks, right, am I so right? You with me?
Oh dude, my freshman RCC (freshman Residential Computer Consulstant-- Counselor? Consultant? Counselor? Consultant?) just walked in and is sitting not enough feet away. This, too, makes suicide an attractive option. I totally just flipped up my collar like I'm a cartoon.
I have to go home now and put my cat in her new Pet Voyage carrier. I can't win. I might as well sling her around my hip while I wash dishes. She can practice being in her bag.
A funny moment is when someone gives you a breathalizer test and you blow a zero (it's also funny to type out "blow a zero"-- you try!) and the person who breathalized you is all, "this thing's broken"-- because, presumably, your behavior indicates obvious inebriation-- and you're all, "yeah, ha, ha, it must be broken," but secretly, in your brain, you're all, "right, no, you just can't breathilize for cocaine." That is a pretty funny secret thought. I would imagine.
Posted by hissycat at 07:50 PM | Comments (2)
December 06, 2005
Shrinky-Dink
On Sunday morning I had a painful conversation with my parents, consumed the 'biscuits n' gravy special' at a local diner, then, weighted down by filial guilt and sausage drippins, slid into a heavy slumber for the rest of the afternoon. When Zuzka shook me awake hours later, it was dark outside and drool was crusted on my chin. At, Zuzka's urging, I took a walk down Castro street during which I found it necessary, on account of my low spirits, to stop into Cliff's General Store and spend the last of my credit on things essential to my happiness. Such as: a teeny tiny palette of watercolors, a miniature xylophone, soap bubbles, a wind-up rabbit that walks in circles, a yellow thing that pops, an unfinished heart-shaped box, collage glue, three different colors of glitter contact paper, two packs of Shrinky-Dink, and a paper accordian with butterflies.
I'm not saying paper accordians and mechanical bunnies are adequate substitutes for the hard drugs a case like me calls for. I'm a'waitin' for the Topamax(TM) to kick in. In fact, I volunteered to start at 100 mg instead of 50 or 25 because fuck the side effects! I'm hardcore like that! On the other hand, shiny things smile my brain for five seconds whether I will it or not.
In any event, I didn't sleep at all last night, which isn't as bad a thing as it sounds-- trying to sleep, I decided, was way too much pressure. I figured it'd be more relaxing to watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force and make Shrinky-Dinks in bed, which is just what I did. Damn good Shrinky-Dinks, I might add, on which I have traced with the insane detail of a hypomanic insomniac basketcase the covers of some very cool classic paperback books: Pale Fire, Gravity's Rainbow, The Brothers K, Democracy, The Berlin Stories. Now I realize the market Shrinky-Dinked paperback covers is a somewhat limited one, but as I'm officially broke (this afternoon I go to the food stamps office, yum yum!), I'm going to throw it out there that if the spirit should so move you to hit that there PayPal button, I'll send a Shrinky-Dink your way as a token of appreciation. They need to be sealed so they don't smudge, but I'll do that today.
I'll take some photos and get them up soon. Also, if you'd like me to make you a specifc Shrinky-Dunk book (or other image) let me know. As long as I have the book or can borrow it, I'll make it. Oh, and let me know if you'd like a hole in it so you can hang it as an ornament or on a necklace. It could also be mounted on a magnets or broach!
Posted by hissycat at 02:00 PM | Comments (1)
October 23, 2005
Paperback Of The Week
Yeah, "Una Mujer" is one of my favorite authors.
Posted by hissycat at 03:38 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
October 15, 2005
Paperback Of The Week
Yes, I'm one day early, but I'm not quite up to posting anything written yet.
Posted by hissycat at 03:25 PM | Comments (8299) | TrackBack
September 25, 2005
Sunday Morning Regrets
Why, oh, why did I think it was a good idea to leave the house tonight wearing both black tights and knee socks of the thick, white cabled variety? It wasn't. I looked ridiculous.
Posted by hissycat at 01:22 AM | Comments (12) | TrackBack
September 09, 2005
When Design Attacks
 | Currently Reading Movable Type 3.0 Bible Desktop Edition By Rogers Cadenhead see related |
Exciting news: smartypants Tamara (Death Before Onions) will betransferring her blog to hissycat.com. How fantastic. I'm flattered.
I don't sleep anymore. I cry and I code (no connection). CSS is the best/worst thing to happen to me. I'm obsessed. I'm still tentative about messing with any of the non-CSS MT template files. I tried to, as the kids say, "plug in" a couple of extremely modest, teeny-weeny little scripts, but when I loaded the page the scripts not only failed to execute anything but also made my formatting go ape-shit. I'm thinking I must have plugged them into the wrong jack, or outlet, or whatever the fuck I'm supposed to call the place where they plug into.
I want to get my page icon todisplay in the url bar, but I can't. And other difficulties, middlinto moderate in size.
The hissycat blog, at the very least, should launch by the end of this weekend. Additional pages will follow. Nowthat I have a working schema of the site, I can do fun, design-relatedtasks. Like playing with pictures of bunnies and ducks. Like making pretty patterns. Like offending and horrifying Alex with my opposite-of-minimalist "design"-- chock full of lacy crap and cobbled together clutter. Everything I touch looks like the frumpy, faded tschatzke of a packrat-spinster-librarian who lives alone, feeding offof books, public radio, and obscure scholarly/ literary journals, and talking to the three-legged cat she named after a character in Ulysses.I'm trying to excercise restraint, though. I don't want to be precious and, like a good bookworm spinster nerd, my first priority is readability.
The elevator in Alex's apartment building was done in a wallpaper that,frankly, is horrifying. Even to me, and I'm, like, the least effeminate gay man� I know. The pattern is so obnoxious and bizarre and aggresive. Alex has perfected a backwards walk into the elevator with his eyes half-closed and cast down so as to avoid the blight on his vision. It gives you motion sickness just to look at it. I started to feel like the heroine of the Charlotte Perkins Gilman story. Before long, I felt compelled to enact the final scene of The Yellow Wallpaper.
It sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it! All those strangled heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growths just shriek with derision! . . .there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did?
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Posted by hissycat at 02:02 PM | Comments (18) | TrackBack
August 22, 2005
This Is Too Easy
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Posted by hissycat at 05:15 PM | Comments (23) | TrackBack
August 12, 2005
Kansas School Board Scientifically Demonstrates There Is No Such Thing As Human Progress
| Currently Listening Muscler's Guide to Videonics By Tracy + the Plastics see related |
? Also, what business does this websitehave using the words "intelligent" and "design" together, in anycontext at all? Oh, and I love their slogan: "Taking Life Back toits Origins." Um, yeah, you could use that slogan to describewhat they're doing. You could also use, "Taking Science Back tothe Middle Ages" or "Taking Civilization Back to Square One" or "TakingGovernment Back to Before the Bill of Rights."
This joke is getting pretty fucking old. Haven't we had enough already?
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Posted by hissycat at 11:48 AM | Comments (24) | TrackBack