Post-It Doodles No. 5

I haven't forgotten these.

Still doing them.

Hesse

Like a wallflower he stayed in the background waiting for someone to fetch him, someone more courageous and stronger than himself to tear him away and force him into happiness.

***

Hans thought about nothing but Heilner for the rest of the afternoon. What an odd fellow! Hans' worries and desires simply did not exist for him. He had thoughts and words of his own, he lived a richer and freer life, suffered strange ailments and seemed to despise everything around him. He understood the beauty of the ancient columns and the walls. And he practiced the mysterious and unusual art of mirroring his soul in verse and of constructing a semblance of life for himself out of his imagination. He was quick and untamable and had more fun in a day than Hans in an entire year. He was melancholy and seemed to relish his own sadness like an unusual condition, alien and delicious.

from "Beneath The Wheel"

Hermann Hesse is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors.

No Cure! (well, not for a while anyway)

The Cure have pulled the plug on all North American tour dates for Sept/Oct., so if you got 'em, either hold on to it or get a refund.

It seems time is needed to finish up their new double album and want to include some new numbers to the set. I for one won't mind if it was all classic Cure songs. Details on their official site. Besides the recent Greatest Hits CD, the last Cure album I bought was Wild Mood Swings.

Well, I don't have anything more to add. So here's a set list of songs that they performed the very first time I saw them back in November 1, 1985 at Radio City Music Hall. The very next evening we went to see Simple Minds on the same stage with Shriekback opening. Remember them? They had that one hit called Nemesis. What I liked about this Cure Show was that they didn't have an opening band and there were no stage props or anything. They just came out and played. Very loud, from what I remember.

• baby screams
• play for today
• kyoto song
• primary
• hanging garden
• cold
• a night like this
• inbetween days
• let's go to bed
• the walk
• push
• screw
• one hundred years
• a forest
• sinking
• six different ways
• charlotte sometimes
• three imaginary boys
• boys don't cry
• 10:15 saturday night
• killing an arab
• do you wanna touch

I got it from this site here.

The last time I saw them was in the mid 90s. It was actually a freebie. The company I worked for owned a box at the venue and agreed to give us some tickets for the show. Fun, but annoying because we were sharing the box with a bunch of idiots who weren't fans and were just there to be at the box and hang out and drink beer. The show was fantastic though.

Here's a pretty decent live version of "A Forest." off of 17 Seconds.



I think the most listened to of all Cure albums for me were 17 Seconds and Faith. And after that, probably Pornography. No surprising as they were really mellow and downbeat apart from a few numbers like Play for Today and Primary. The two were so much alike that they combined them both together and released it as a double LP called "Happily Ever After."

I guess I did have more to add.

Moz - Fall tour

Looks like Moz will be returning to NYC for some fall dates. And this time, he's playing at the smaller venues. In NYC it will be the Hammerstein Ballroom. And it won't be for just the one evening. He'll be doing shows for five nights (October 22-28). They are also offering season tickets for $200 which means you get to go in first and take your place right in front of the stage. I'll probably go for one of the nights. Los Angeles fans will get to pick from one of ten evenings he'll be playing at the Palladium. Imagine the price of the season tickets for THAT one. Got to True To You for the full deal.

The Cure have postponed their September 23 show at Madison Square Garden.

Illustration Friday - Visitors

Thoughts, emotions and identity are like visitors in our minds making us what we can be at any moment in our lives. Making us into the unique individual that we all are. Some visitors seem to take up permanent residency in our minds. Usually not the good kind. But there's always a vacancy for the good thought visitors in my mind. In the end, it's all good as long as we recognize them and deal with them without harm to ourselves or others. And here's to all the good visitors of this blog. Enjoy your stay.

Shoes

OK, I cracked up watching this promo from VH1's "I Hate My 30s" show.

It's on tonight at 10:30.

Quick Fashion sketch

Just a quick fashion sketch I did tonight from an old magazine I had on hand.

Art or lack of it

Art, what can I say? I regret not keeping up in practice and I hope all the money I spent this weekend at Blick Art Materials will not go to waste. And that includes the books at Barnes & Noble.

My intention was to buy just the two items. A Moleskine sketch book and a suitable pen.

Then I saw all these things.

So in addition to the above, I bought a set of 48 Prismacolor pencils. A set of Prismacolor ink pens. A set of Speedball sketching quill/nib set with some India Ink. Some paper and a couple of other small items.

I already have some Rembrandt soft pastels and a set of Cotman watercolors. So I'm pretty much set with all sorts of media to inspire and create.

Now if I can just jump in with some confidence, things would flow through. However, I'm having some problems in that department at the moment and I'm feeling a bit discouraged which is why I've had a lack in posting to the blog.

But I'm working on it. I did want to sign up for a pen and ink drawing course at the Visual Arts college but it was just too expensive for me at the moment. And it seemed like the perfect course to take at the moment since I'm feeling a bit fired up about doing some of this art. It starts next month and maybe something may just happen where I'm able to do it.

*Picture taken from the Blick website.

Inspire Me Thursday - "Dear Diary"

I came upon the website of Inspire Me Thursday while looking at art blogs and it inspired me to post this. The topic was "Dear Diary" and I thought since I have so many journals, I figured I could find something art-related.

It is a self-portrait of me as I remembered and saw myself in New York City. The 90s were a pretty tough time for me. Living in a place I didn't want to live. Friends moving away and having my fill of meeting a lot people that reassured my faith in not trusting or getting too close to people and off course family life was no better.

It took seven years after that entry to finally to get my crap together and leave.

Thank you to the people at Inspire Me Thursday!

New Track: "Voyager"

New track from Gravity & Fusion titled "Voyager."

Basically, I just turned on my equipment and hit the global record button and went with it. I did not use a sequencer and all sounds are from the Roland Juno.

I actually felt it to be a little incomplete, but try as I may, I did not find anything more to add to it. The entire piece contains just five tracks. But I feel I have made the point of using less. Space is VERY empty!

The inspiration for this piece is Voyager's travels out into space. It's travels to the planets and beyond. I think the end of the piece suggests that after Voyager leaves the edges of our outer solar system, it enters deep space where it's mostly empty. And so the single note lingers for a while until the piece is finished.

I hope you enjoy it.

Link to SendSpace: Voyager

In the sun, it's for everyone!

Things getting you down? You should go to the child within or the teenager within and think of those things that made you happy. I went to a place in time where despite some problems, things were a little carefree and I had certain things to keep me company namely, the above woman you see above. I'm so glad that I meet more people today who are fans like myself. When I was a teen, I felt I was the only one. I was labeled a freak of sorts for obsessing over such a band. And if there ever was another, I never met him/her. At Junior High, it was all KISS, Zeppelin and disco kids. Despite the fact that Blondie's biggest hit was a disco song, I still had the words DISCO SUCKS written on my notebook.

So summertime was all about getting a few bucks somehow, and shopping for magazines (anything with Debbie), comics and staying up late to catch whatever weird movies were shown on TV, most of them being Japanese Monster movies which by the way Blondie paid homage to in their first album with the song "The Attack of The Giant Ants."

Lyrics:

Giant ants from space snuff the human race
Then they eat your face, never leave a trace
La la la la la, la la la la la, la la la la la
They shoot fire all around. Tokyo burns down
Everybody drowns. The moon falls on the ground
La la la la la, la la la la la, la la la la la

They can't be stopped at all. The buildings start to fall
Soldiers shoot all day and then they run away
La la la la la, la la la la la, la la la la la

The world is holocaust. Everything is lost
Mankind is destroyed. Sprinkled in the void
La la la la la, la la la la la, la la la la la

Giant ants from space waste the human race
Then they eat your face, never leave a trace
La la la la la, la la la la la, la la la la la

Side note - I have a tape version of that first album and though the album was self titled, my tape did have one. It was called "Waiting." I might have something rare there!

And in memory of summers long gone and in which are so emblazoned in my memory, here are the lyrics to "In The Sun."

Surf's up!
In the sun, I'm waiting for the day
Having fun, in warm far away
Moonlight nights, water seems so clear
Ooh city lights while I'm still waiting here

In the sun, it's for everyone
In the sun, were gonna have some fun
In the sun, were gonna shoot the tube
I'll do it for you, my paka lola luau love

New York isle is covered by grey
Concrete piles, blues play my way
Tropic haze, pineapple sky
Perfect wave, hurricane eye

In the sun, it's for everyone
In the sun, were gonna have some fun
In the sun, were gonna shoot the tube
I'll do it for you, my paka lola luau love

In the sun, it's for everyone
In the sun, were gonna have some fun
In the sun, were gonna shoot the tube
I'll do it for you, my paka lola luau love

Where is my wave?
Where is my wave?

Wow! Chrissie Hynde, Debbie and Siouxsie all together in one room!

Speaking of comics of which I'll be exploring this weekend (I'm going for those back issues of anything from, maybe, Detective Comics from the late 70s to early 80s. I just want to see those GRIT adds!) This particular comic pictured above (I know that's a DVD cover, but the comic is of same) was a prized possession until someone came over my apartment once when I was living in Arizona and asked to borrow it. And never returned it or even offered to do so! I won't mention any names, but he is a personal friend of Debbie & Chris. I should mention his name though so when he Googles his ass, he'll come upon this and get a hint. Dude, I want it back! You flake! Ah, at least I know it has a good home. Or something.

This is not a love song

I'm having such a day of it. And It's not even half-way through. I'm trying to hang in there but I'm caught on a wave of despair. DESPAIR I tell you!

I nearly sobbed this morning (OK, well, I actually sobbed. OK???). I can't say exactly what triggered it, but you know it was probably building up all this time and overspilled.

Someone reading this is saying "Get over it, V!"

No, I won't. Can you please try to understand me?

I'm tired of flakes, phonies and bullies!

Am I ever that person? I'm going to go out on a limb and say no. I react to flakes, phonies and bullies. So if my reaction to them makes me look like a flake, phony or a bully, well, they have only themselves to blame for it.

It's tough in New York to make friends. A lot of people think because so many people live here, that it's easy to get on with people. But understand that 90% are, yes, you guessed it:

FLAKES, PHONIES AND BULLIES!

I'm tired.
I'm so very tired
And I'm feeling very sick and ill today.

But I'm still fond of you.

8 Random Facts

I have been tagged by Steve to do an "8 random facts" about me, so here it goes.

1. first, post these rules
2. post 8 random facts about yourself
3. write a blogspot about those facts
4. tag and name 8 more bloggers
5. tell them that they're tagged at their blog

Fact 1: I worked at the Underground at New York City's Union Square during the summer of 87.

For a time, I was obsessed with the movie Liquid Sky. Watched it constantly. I think I was attracted to the visuals. It was movie with a lot of bad acting. The kind that made you laugh even though the characters were trying to be serious. There was a scene during the end of the movie where Margaret, after killing Adrien by having sex with her, goes out to this nightclub where she looks for the junky that raped her earlier: "I've done more Quaaludes than you have aspirin, now where's the cocaine?!" - Anyway, the scene is full 80s night club appeal. During the summer of 87, I was living in New York with a bunch of people in a studio apartment. I got hired as a busboy/bar-back at the Underground and the first night I observed the the lights and the scene and realized that this was the exact club that the scene in Liquid Sky was filmed. I just think it aerie that I'd end up working there after being so obsessed with the movie. Power of Intention? I don't know. The Underground night club is now a Pet Smart. Oh well.

Fact 2: I got the chance to go backstage at one of the most memorable concerts of my life in 1986.

I won't mention the band. If there were anyone that knew me from before and was reading this, they'd roll their eyes and say "oh not this again, what an egotistical bitch!" Anyway, a friend of a friend knew the bodyguard to this band and offered a couple of backstage tickets to the show. My friend was offered this ticket but wanted me to go instead who knew how much the band meant to me at the time. Nice, right? I'll remember you always. After an amazing show, I went backstage into this little room and had the most strange feeling being in the presence of my musical idols. And they did not disappoint me one bit. Each and every one of them were so friendly. But being so awkward and painfully shy, I didn't get to use this opportunity to its full potential. But still, it may be the only highlight of my life that this actually happened. After backstage, there was an after show party and I met up with the opening band who were just as friendly and would always remember me at every show. When I moved to Arizona, I was actually contacted on the phone by one of the members to come to the show and allow me and my friends to go backstage with them. Power of Intention? I don't know but I don't have much stories that are as exciting to me as these and there's always that risk of people thinking you are showing off when all you want to tell is a story. Oh well. 1986, magical year.

Fact 3: Debbie Harry and how I met her.

It's no secret that I have a special love for Debbie Harry and Blondie ever since the first time I saw the video to the song Heart of Glass on Solid Gold 79. After being in New York the second time around, Blondie had decided to reform and put out a new album about 14 years after their last recording. So I read somewhere that they were doing a show at Town Hall. I went to all ticket sales places (remember when you can buy tickets at record stores like Tower Records?) Anyway, I was disappointed to find out there there are no tickets for sale for that particular show and I wanted so much to see this reunion show. Apparently, I found out later that this was a VH1 concert to be taped at the Town Hall and they weren't selling tickets in the usual way. I didn't know how they were going about getting fans to the show, so it was a no-go for me. So with my head down, I went up the street to turn the corner and go into Barnes & Noble to do some book browsing. There I saw a sign saying "Meet Debbie Harry and Chris Stein of Blondie!" They were there sign autographs to the book "Making Tracks, the Rise of Blondie." So quickly I went inside, bought the book and got on the line with all other fans. I came face to face with Debbie for the first time and told her how much I loved her and she signed my book. Is it going to annoy you if I again ask whether this is the Power of Intention? Too bad. Many years later a friend of mine invited me to a small screening to a short flick and guess who starred in it? And guess who was at the screening? Nice. But I didn't talk to her then. Just didn't want to invade in that way.

Fact 4: I was a dancer that once stopped traffic.

So the story goes as told by my mother and it embarrasses me to tell the story but who's reading anyway? When I was just a wee one, I loved to dance and by the way, I don't remember this so I must have been quite young. The story is that I went out in the streets and began dancing right in front of the cars. Cars had to stop because there was a child in the street.... dancing. And it seemed that I wasn't going to leave the street anytime soon, so, what did drivers do? They stopped their engines and just began enjoying the show. That is until my mother realized what was going on and pulled me away. Traffic resumed after that and my dancing career was over then.

Fact 5: I wanted to learn piano

I showed interest in art and learning the piano and apparently dancing at a very young age. But my parents had no interest in this so they never granted me my wishes for learning the piano. My father would often make fun of me for wanting to play . My brother on the other hand who is just four years older got his hands on an acoustic guitar, lessons and later an electric one. Well, he wanted to impress girls and that was alright by my dad. So I waited until I could get a job so I can buy me a keyboard. And since then I've been self thought on playing music on the keyboard and have recorded many musical pieces. So, stick it dad!

Fact 6: I've always wanted to live.

Yes it's true, but for some reason, the world is opposed to this and at times I learn the harsh truth of reality that the living is only for the extremely talented and the beautiful. Facts have taken an awful wrong turn, haven't they?

Fact 7: I hate my name.

What the hell. I'm beginning to think this is the reason nobody wants to befriend me. And even to my people, my name is a bit odd to them. It's very difficult to introduce myself in loud places, often repeating my name over and over and each time it is echoed back with such mispronunciation that I want to vomit. Is there such a thing as too foreign? That even those who are extremely tolerant of foreigners say "this is where I draw the line." But I'm probably wrong. But am I wrong?

Fact 8: Drugs are bad.. mmmmm k?

But I'm sure I'm not the only one to fry their brains for a time in their lives. It just seemed like the thing to do at the time. In my early 20s living in Arizona, I met a few people who would offer me the choice to fry. So I did. And I had loads of laughs doing it. It was an experience that I don't actually regret. LSD and John Waters we found out was the perfect recipe for a good time. The downside? The crash that I endured from it was not fun. I'm a depressive to begin with and when coming down, it made me even more depressed. Strange highs and strange lows.

OK, now I'm supposed to tag 8 other bloggers. I don't have that many regular readers, I'm so unpopular in blog land. So I'll try.

1. Xolondon
2. Jack
3. Kilgorsky
4. JL
5. Dan
   

Most bloggers that used to read me are not around anymore so I can't tag 8 people. Does this mean I've broken the rules?

Morrissey - Atlantic City "of all places"

OK, so Morrissey did not re-schedule the MSG concert and canceled it altogether. This could be because of poor ticket sales. And after seeing him live yesterday at the Borgata Hotel & Casino (oh for Pet's sake) - I kinda got a feeling that that was it. The Borgata is less than half the space of the MSG and there were plenty of empty seats. And the floor was not all that crowded. I think he would have fared well by playing Radio City again Beacon Theater or The Apollo. Though hid did play The Apollo in 2004 for an entire week and sold out every show. So what's the deal? I figured a lot of fans from NYC like myself would make the trip out to Atlantic City to catch the show, but I guess a lot of people were maybe pretty pissed off at the man right now.

Moz put on a fantastic show, I thought. Opening with "Panic." Most of the songs came from his last two albums with some classic Smiths and solo stuff like Panic, The Boy With The Thorn In His Side, How Soon is Now, Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want (lyrics changed to "let me get who I want"), The Last of The International Playboys, Disappointed, Everyday Is Like Sunday. He introduced two new songs. One about Paris and one about growing up with lyrics like, and I'm trying to remember something about falling down, breaking your spine and that there are worst things that could happen rather than being some one's sweetie! Good one.
His voice was excellent and in good form. He chatted with the audience quite a bit and off course the die-hard fans that come by for every show are mentioned by names. Questions are asked to the super fan such as "Why do people scream?" During Irish Blood, the lyrics were changed to "Americans being sick to death of Republicans." It brought loud cheers from the crowd.

During encore a few people managed to get up on the stage and were hurried off the stage. At one point it seemed to get out of control as Moz egging on the fans to get to the stage as the guards are scrambling all over the place to catch them. One guy got up and as he made a run for Moz, he was stopped half way by a guard with some kind of security-guard blocking motion and the guy just flipped back and fell slamming back.

I could have been down on the floor, but I just sat watched the whole thing from a seat on the riser. Had a good time. I'd never been to Atlantic City before so thanks to Moz, I now know what it's like out there. So, I'm glad I headed out there. I have a feeling he'll come back in the fall, but with Moz you can never be too sure.

P.S.: You don't want to see the terrible pictures I took of the show with my phone cam. Can't make out a thing other than the James Dean back-drop.

Also... oh never mind.

Some fashion - and hands. From the "portfolio"

Turban (Contour)

This was one of the exercises in Contour Drawing that I did while taking a course in fashion illustration. If you've taken art lessons, I'm sure you know what it is (it's sort of like blind drawing - You can't look at your work while doing it). After if was finished, I was able to fill it up with oil pastel. It was a drawing of a male model wearing an elaborate turban. Come to think of it, I think it was just a big peace of cloth made to look like a turban. Whatever. This was the result and you can see underneath the lines going in all directions.

Man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door of his prison and run away. A man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons him.

- Plato

I'm not happy.

Post-It doodles No. 4

Another installment of Post-It doodles.

The one on the upper left is some kind of jelly-like alien with one eye and may only be found floating around within the clouds of Jupiter. Or something.

Enjoy the weekend!

I've always known...

From "A Pale Blue Dot"

I'm reading Carl Sagan's "A Pale Blue Dot" at the moment. Here's little excerpt from a chapter titled "Is there Intelligent Life On Earth?"

"From your orbital perspective, you can see that something has unmistakably gone wrong. the dominant organisms, whoever they are - who have gone to so much trouble to rework the surface - are simultaneously destroying their ozone layer and their forests, eroding their topsoil, and performing massive, uncontrolled experiments on their planet's climate. Haven't they noticed what's happening? Are they oblivious to their fate? Ar they unable to work together on behalf of the environment that sustains them all?

Perhaps, you think, it's time to reassess the conjecture that there's intelligent life on Earth."