Big Milton 4

My favorite part of this, one of my favorite (top quartile) paintings, is the red goober coming out of the left side of his face ...

I suppose I should say it was an accident.  As if that needed saying.

And now this ...
















Which is part of this ...



Which still has miles to go, but is showing promise.

The question is whether, in my efforts to preserve the goober coming out of Big Milton's head, I compromise the whole process going forward.

The smart money says just black it out and stop worrying about it
That's the smart money.  They've been wrong.
"They've" or "it's"?
Interesting question.  
Today's topic, I guess, is collective nouns, singular or otherwise.
Yes it is.

Big Milton 3

Wrestling with his shoulder ...

Some thought that it should be black on black (a textural thing), although that doesn't appear to be working as well as I had hoped it might.



And here's a giggle ...



This is not to suggest that we are even close to done.  Just some computer fun.

A frame makes everything look great, doesn't it?
Yes it does.

Dog food

Adios Campagnolo

The idea that Downton Abbey is ending makes me want to paint every red door black.


Now, I suppose, would be a great time to mention that my novella "Saigon:  Too Big to Fail" (a surreal mash-up of the Vietnam War and the Financial Crisis of 2008) and related short stories are available on Kindle.  The perfect gift for the Wall Streeter who has everything.  I can guarantee he or she doesn't have this.

Click here.

Big Milton 2

"My head is so big because it's full of ideas."
--Joseph Merrick

It's possible that Mr. Merrick (otherwise known as the Elephant Man) didn't say this, but it works for the post.  Herewith, Big Milton 3 and 4 ...






Remain calm.  I'll clean up the black background later in the process.  The idea now is to simple share the love (in the form of red, orange, yellow and blue first, followed by highly diluted white paint).

Update:  I'm now under the impression that the quote goes "Sometimes I think my head is so big because it is so full of dreams."  Again, not sure if this comes from some stage or move production or if the man actually said it.   Not important, really.

Kids Today

If there is a list of most interesting people under fifteen kicking around someplace, I think Maddie Ziegler should be at the top.  This from the Ellen Show (Ellen apparently is a big fan) ...


It's always a question with extremely young performers as to where the responsibility falls for artistic choices.  I'm sure she has a great director/choreographer, but I like to think that a lot of this is Ms. Ziegler's squishy little brain at work.

Red sofa

I'm working on a Trojan Hors cartoon which goes something like this...

FM -- The neighbors are really pissed that you ate their dog.
MrP-- If you're going to call a dog a Chocolate Lab you should expect the worst.

Gave it an initial shot but the artwork wasn't up to snuff.  Then I found this ...

And now I'm all fired up.

I like incorporating actual images into the strip.  Witness this ...

So I can see the Chocolate Lab strip taking place on the red sofa.  And that should be fun.

And just to explain the phrase "the artwork wasn't up to snuff", what I mean is that if I had my shit together, I'd have one of those electronic styli and special pads that would allow me to draw the strip as if I were drawing it with a pencil.  Which, believe me, would make my life a hell of a lot easier.

Instead all I have is the same shitty apple mouse that comes with my computer.  And although you can do amazing things with a mouse and a computer, drawing line figures is not exactly one of them.

Big Milton 1

The assignment has been to paint Milton Friedman.  Pretty easy, one might think.  One more wrinkled white guy to add to the likes of Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, although I'd advise against hanging Friedman and Bernanke next to each other.  Late at night the shouting you think you hear as you try to sleep will be about lending AIG 85-Large.

Anyway, despite all of the above, it's taken longer than anticipated.  Not sure why -- sometimes it flows and sometimes it doesn't.  Started a previous version and it just wasn't working.  Decided rather than fixing it, just to begin again from Point A.

Thus this ...

 At which point it hit me that the way to paint the man is with a black background, not a white one.

Which is unusual for me, although hardly unprecedented.   I'd call your attention to "St. Joan Receives the Spirit of the Lord", which is a classic.

Don't be confused -- Big Milton will be executed in full color.  In short order, I'm thinking since, now that I'm unlocked, I believe the paint will be flowing here nicely.  Expect to be done in a week or less.  Because I can feel it coming out, even as I type this.

For you completists, this may be interesting.

And This ...

Rebecca Foolery

I was messing around with my upgraded Artrage program and decided to bang out a cartoon ...

If you don't live in Troy, just move along.  There's nothing to see here.

Inverted Trump

The first annotation (my own) is by Voltaire.  Who, if I'm not mistaken, played on the Moses Malone Sixers.

Annotations submitted via comments will be duly transcribed.

Forever Young

Two friends of mine have birthdays today, so this is for them ...


Beautiful song.  Makes me think fondly of Rick Danko and Levon Helm, both of whom can be seen in the video in the flower of their youth and who are now dead.

Adios Campagnolo.

And how fabulous does Bob look?

The CIA

I love to write about the CIA. My characters in Saigon: Too Big To Fail are up to their asses with spooks.  Some are, in fact, spooks themselves.  Others, including the protagonist, work for the Agency on occasion.

At the same time, I'm enjoying very much my slow read of "A Brief History of Seven Killings."  I say slow reading because it is, literally, slow reading.  So much so that the library demanded the book back and I had to wander down to the bookstore and actually buy a copy.  Which, since I'm admiring the work, is not the worst thing in the world.

So, given this background, you can imagine my amusement at a New York Times article titled "Topping studies with a dollop of athletics at the Culinary Institute of America."  If I was a better blogger I'd insert an excellent joke right here.  Instead, I'll insert a snippet from "Saigon: Too Big To Fail" taken from memory (because I have neither the time nor inclination to actually find the bit) and presented in the manner in which Marlon James presents dialogue in A Brief History ...

--Who you with?
--The SEC.
--The SEC?  Wow.  Alabama looks great this year.
--Not the Southeastern Conference, asshole.  The Securities and Exchange Commission.
--Oh.

I would urge you to enjoy it, in its entirety here.  I was then going to close by inserting the David Kinch sea bream sushi U-Tube video, but if you just scroll down a couple of posts you can find it there.

Adios Campagnolo

It's a black day at The Mothership.  Mark Bittman, one of my favorite food writers, is abandoning his post at The Times and taking a job with one of those companies that sends you fresh ingredients in a high tech box twice a week, plus recipes.  The twist is that Bittman's company (I'm guessing he has a piece of the action, and to that I say God blessim) is that it's vegan.  Vegan!

Here's a lovely photograph ...

Taken from an article in The Times last week titled "Mark Bittman's Top Ten Columns" or something similar, it's a photo illustrating one of the recipes from the column titled "Simple Stocks for Soup on the Fly."  The stock in question is herb stock.  Which sounds a little like something in a Bob Marley song.

Which brings me to this ...

Marlon James' book about political upheaval in late 70s Jamaica fueled, in part, by factional jealousies about Bob Marley's political leanings (or lack of same) and the CIA's need to stir every pot, even when the soup was cooking nicely by itself.

Da pot a cook but da food no nuff

What a book!  The bad news is that I'm only half way through and I have to return it to the library today or face a fine of a dollar a day.  The real problem is that the book is structured as a series of short point-of-view chapters, at least half of which are written in dense Jamaican patois.

I'm not talking the "Hey, mon" stuff--hey, that stuff is easy.  No, I'm talking deep patois.  I'm talking slang that if you google it you get nothing.

So it's a slow read.  But fabulous.  Immersive.  I think I'm going to have to buy it.

Everybody Wang Chung Tonight

If I had seven grand with absolutely nothing attached to it, I'd march down to Christies and bid on this.

Of course the Christies in question is in Hong Kong, so (since nobody wants to fly to HK coach) you have to add another seven grand.  So that's 14.  Although in this day and age it's the easiest thing to bid via the internet.  So we're back to seven K.

The full listing is here.  The piece measures just more than twenty-six inches square and would, when framed, fill a good bit of a wall nicely.  Because, hey, everything can't be four feet by five.

The piece is either a bit of a poem or a poem.  If my Cantonese is up to snuff it reads:

I do not belittle the moderns but I also love the old;
There are fundamental reasons why elegant and beautiful prose is sought after.

Nicely said, Wang Jiqian.  One more compelling reason to read Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf.

And, of course, the numbers ...

When I wrote The Year of Magical Painting I got a bit too caught up in the numbers.  Which was a sickness I'm going to try to avoid this time around.

That said, I couldn't help but notice that I was averaging about one visitor a day on this site during the period in which I was posting nothing.  Yesterday I coughed up the most modest of posts--a hairball, really; nothing more--and I jumped to five visitors.  Yikes.

In its heyday, TYOMP was bringing in 10,000+ visitors a month.  Because I never attached any advanced analytics for measuring visitors, I relied on the quick snapshot that Google provides every blog and just took it at face value.  But I never really believed that many people stopped by.

I think I'm more comfortable with five.

A Mind Seems Like a Terrible Thing to Waste

Yesterday I blogged here for the first time in six seven eight months.  Sometimes you just have to let the fields lie fallow.  Plant some winter mustard to replenish the nitrogen in the the soil, nothing more.

Anyway, I think I'll come back.  Write some more stuff.  Enjoy the Knicks.  Certainly more than last year.

Check this out ...

It's the basis of my next Saigon: Too Big To Fail short story.

Go Blue

Did you see the Giants game?

I turned it off at the beginning of the 4th quarter.  To quote Carmella Soprano, "I got a bad feeling."

I hate those fucking Patriots and I sure as hell wasn't going to sit there and watch them win it with a 54 yarder with one second to go.  Reading about it is painful enough.

Forza Michael

Who knows how Michael Schumacher (the former driver, not my cat) is doing?  I hope well, but information regarding his recovery is sparse.  It would be fun if he knew that his son Mick just won a Formula 4 race.  This from the Euro version of ESPN ...

Mick Schumacher has won on his first weekend of German Formula 4.

Schumacher, the son of seven-time Formula One champion Michael, finished ninth on his German ADAC F4 debut on Saturday, before crossing 12th in the second race of the weekend on Sunday. For the third and final race at Oschersleben Schumacher lined up second on the reserve grid and quickly moved into the lead.

The Van Amersfoort Racing driver had to fend off a late charge from Australian Joseph Mawson after a period behind the safety car but held his nerve to finish with an advantage of half a second, clinching the first win of his single-seater career. The 16-year-old is fifth in the championship with 27 points after the first three races, but leads the rookie championship. Team-mate Harrison Newey, son of Red Bull design guru Adrian, is 12th in the standings after the opening weekend. 

Mick's father Michael, the most successful driver in the history of F1, continues to recover from the head injuries he suffered in a skiing accident in December 2013 and is currently undergoing private medical care at the family home in Switzerland.

Lovely.

I Love J.R. Smith

As, like, a son.  You know?

Me?  I've got two of the best kids ever.  And let's say one of them robbed a bank and ended up with ten to fifteen in the big house.  Or the other one put a space heater too close to the curtain and burned the house down.  With the cat inside!

If you're a parent you've surely had similar experiences.  And sure you get pissed, but they're still your kids and you still love them.  So what else are you going to do?  You drag your ass upstate every Sunday for visiting hours and pick her up when they finally let her out.  Hopefully sooner than later on good behavior.

I indirectly refer, of course, to my main man J.R.Smith and the bonehead technical he got in the last game against the Celtics for trying to knock Jai Crowder's head off.  It wasn't the technical that was the problem, it was the two game suspension that followed.  And now, absent Smith for two games on top of the season-ending injury to Kevin Love, the Bulls are having their way with the Clicks (Cleveland Knicks).

Did your kids do those things you mentioned?
No.  They did worse shit than that.
Ahhhh.

I employ the term Clicks because the Cavaliers employ three former Knicks of significance.  Smith, as discussed; Iman Shumpert, he of the other-worldly fade cut; and Timofey Mozgov.  Don't get me started on this.  I'm trying to have a nice day.

Check out J.R.'s tatts ...

I think you could argue that the two-game suspension was a bit harsh.  Just prior to the foul Crowder gave Smith a forearm shiver to the back of the neck that would have killed a lesser man.
Nicely said.  My expectation was one game, not two.
You know what they say about expectations.
I thought that was assumptions.
Possibly.  Either way, it applies.