Harry lost everything, buying drugs from the thugs.
Now life don't seem so sunny, cause he's one sad little bunny.
Showing posts with label Artwork. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Artwork. Show all posts
Friday, September 24, 2010
Friday, July 16, 2010
Friday, June 25, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
Friday, April 23, 2010
Friday, April 16, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
Friday, February 26, 2010
Ice-Cold *BEAR-CHUG*
Because you demanded it...and because I was real busy this week--I give you MORE *BEAR-CHUG*!!!
Enjoy:
UPDATE: Per Leah's request, I give you:
Enjoy:
UPDATE: Per Leah's request, I give you:
Friday, January 29, 2010
*BEAR-CHUG*
I would like to dedicate this week's SCATTERSHOT Blog post to a very special young lady, now living in the (supposedly) great-state of New Jersey.
Becky, this is for you:
I invent a lot of stupid, pointless things...but I never would have invented *BEAR-CHUG* were it not for Becky. You see, Becky and I do this thing where our Google Messenger status reads "Bears Are Texting." As far as I know, this means nothing, but cracks Becky up. So with that in my mind, at work yesterday I came up with *BEAR-CHUG*
It's a random greeting of sorts. I predict that this Internet Meme will not only take the world by storm, but make me rich* and famous!
To quote the late-great Mr. George Carlin: "These are the thoughts that kept me out of the really good schools."
*Order you *BEAR-CHUG* T-shirts now!!!
Friday, January 8, 2010
(There's No Such Thing As) The Color Purple
Unless you know what they look like, colors are impossible to describe. A blind person cannot be told—with any degree of accuracy—what the color green looks like. Color is one of those immaterial, “all in our heads” kind of thing. Light strikes an object and bounces off. This light hits our eye and our brain takes this light and interprets color—in a way I so complicated that I may as well call it “magic.” The surfaces of objects determine their color. Simply: whatever color an object is—that’s the wavelength of light the object absorbs the most of, the rest of the colors trapped inside a beam of light is “scattered.” If a surface scatters all wavelengths we see it as white, likewise, if all the wavelengths are absorbed we see black.
There are some people who are blind and see nothing and then there the “color blind.” These people have trouble seeing some colors because of a genetic defect in their eyes. All of this is remarkable and hard to grasp at the same time—in reality an object’s color has more to do with the light that is shining on it AND the person viewing it. For some reason this always reminds me of the classic “If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it” question. I realize that all of this is very Zen, and probably bores most people to tears so I’ll get on with it.
Purple.
The word “purple” is a very strange word to me. Besides the numerous connotations to the color (royalty, homosexuality, Easter), there are a number of ideas…concepts or feelings that purple instantly brings to mind. Swollen, vulgar, unlikely, comical, and unhealthy. I think about flowers, of course, and I think about a bruise. Then there’s Barney the Dinosaur and Grimace the…whatever the hell he is over in McDonald’s. Of course, no matter how old I get, I’ll never forget my crazy 4th grade Art Teacher, Miss Whatshername.
In my experience, 99% of all Art Teachers are insane. I’m not talking a “bit-barmy-he-enjoys-opening-umbrellas-indoors”…I’m talking “fucking-nuts-he enjoys-opening-umbrellas-indoors…umbrellas-made-of human-flesh.” My cousin’s wife is an Art Teacher in Kansas, and while she’s a nice, normal sort, I assure you she is the exception to the rule. Art Teachers seem to be living in another world. One where clay speaks (if you know how to listen) and colored pencils should all have names—real names, like Larry or Steve.
After spending five hours mindlessly toiling on worksheets, my 4th grade class would gather our supplies and head to the basement of our school to the “art room.” This room consisted of several long wooden tables, and a few thousand dollars work of Prang watercolors. Oh, and there were drying racks—whole endless rows of drying racks.
Our Art Teacher, Miss Whatshername, would cackle as we entered her domain, like a witch. She usually wore something “Earthy” (think neutral browns, and material made of reeds and burlap sacks). Miss Whatshername had long, grayish hair that was freakishly straight and always wrapped in a do-rag. With her long, bony fingers she’d point us to our seats as we filed into the room.
There are some people who are blind and see nothing and then there the “color blind.” These people have trouble seeing some colors because of a genetic defect in their eyes. All of this is remarkable and hard to grasp at the same time—in reality an object’s color has more to do with the light that is shining on it AND the person viewing it. For some reason this always reminds me of the classic “If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it” question. I realize that all of this is very Zen, and probably bores most people to tears so I’ll get on with it.
Purple.
The word “purple” is a very strange word to me. Besides the numerous connotations to the color (royalty, homosexuality, Easter), there are a number of ideas…concepts or feelings that purple instantly brings to mind. Swollen, vulgar, unlikely, comical, and unhealthy. I think about flowers, of course, and I think about a bruise. Then there’s Barney the Dinosaur and Grimace the…whatever the hell he is over in McDonald’s. Of course, no matter how old I get, I’ll never forget my crazy 4th grade Art Teacher, Miss Whatshername.
In my experience, 99% of all Art Teachers are insane. I’m not talking a “bit-barmy-he-enjoys-opening-umbrellas-indoors”…I’m talking “fucking-nuts-he enjoys-opening-umbrellas-indoors…umbrellas-made-of human-flesh.” My cousin’s wife is an Art Teacher in Kansas, and while she’s a nice, normal sort, I assure you she is the exception to the rule. Art Teachers seem to be living in another world. One where clay speaks (if you know how to listen) and colored pencils should all have names—real names, like Larry or Steve.
After spending five hours mindlessly toiling on worksheets, my 4th grade class would gather our supplies and head to the basement of our school to the “art room.” This room consisted of several long wooden tables, and a few thousand dollars work of Prang watercolors. Oh, and there were drying racks—whole endless rows of drying racks.
Our Art Teacher, Miss Whatshername, would cackle as we entered her domain, like a witch. She usually wore something “Earthy” (think neutral browns, and material made of reeds and burlap sacks). Miss Whatshername had long, grayish hair that was freakishly straight and always wrapped in a do-rag. With her long, bony fingers she’d point us to our seats as we filed into the room.
Miss Whatshername had many peculiarities, but the most startling one was her abject hatred for Purple. This became apparent during our very first meeting when my class sat down to talk about colors. We learned that there are three primary colors—red, yellow, and blue. These colors, when mixed in various ways, make all the other colors of the rainbow.
“What are all the colors?” Miss Whatshername asked us from her perch near the chalkboard.
“Orange,” someone said.
“Good!” Miss Whatshername said. “Orange is red and yellow mixed together!”
“Green!” another one of my classmates shouted.
“Ah yes, Green!” Miss Whatshername exclaimed. “Green is yellow and blue mixed together!”
“Purple.”
There was an icy silence as the smile faded from Miss Whatshername’s lips. She stood up slowly, like a dazed car-crash victim.
“What? What was that?”
No one said a word. You could hear a…crayon drop.
Miss Whatshername shuffled over to the chalkboard and picked up a hunk of white, furiously she began to scribble on the dusty white surface. I can still hear the shrill squeak of her chalk as she wrote. I can close my eyes and still see her flabby, middle-aged arm wobble as she angrily wrote one word, then another.
The two words were PURPLE and VIOLET.
“This,” Miss Whatshername said pointing at the word VIOLET. “Is a color, whereas this word…Purple…this is not a color.”
She looked at both the world Purple on the blackboard and us with a look of disgust. We were dirty and unrefined, and so was Purple. We began to murmur amongst ourselves, the venom in Miss Whatshername’s voice had both frightened and excited us. Was this woman serious? We’d been calling it Purple for years and no one had ever said a word about it not being a color.
And anyway, wasn't Violet a flower?
Someone got the idea to check the Crayon box—the good people at Crayola had our backs: the paper wrapper said “Purple.” When this fact was pointed out to Miss Whatshername, she became even more agitated.
“There is no such color as Purple and in my class, no one will use that term!” she shouted above the giggling din.
Was this woman insane?
“Purple…”
“No!” Miss Whatshername exclaimed. “No Purple!”
This was the first time I ever truly disagreed with a teacher. This instance was the first time a person in authority seemed completely stupid. It wasn’t just that I disagreed with what she was saying (she was correct in a way, “Purple” is a general, Old-English term…whereas “Violet” is the correct term for the color achieved by mixing red with blue), it was the manner in which she carried herself as she said it. What she was saying blew our little 4th grade minds. We’d been taught by both our parents and other teachers to call Violet “Purple.” The terms are essentially interchangeable in the everyday (read: non-art class) world.
This woman, this Miss Whatshername, was just being an intellectual snob.
Of course I didn’t know this at the time, but that’s what she was. Miss Whatshername was too good for the common “Purple.” Instead, the only word she’d “hear” in her class was Violet. Over the course of the year few of us would test her (those brave souls). They’d ask her for a Purple colored pencil, to see if she’d unthinkingly hand them a “Violet” one…thus establishing that the two were, in fact, one and the same. Or they’d ask her if they’d used too much Purple paint in their surrealistic lunchroom painting.
But Miss Whatshername never fell for it. She never took the bait; instead she’s just stare at them dumbly. Most of the time the question was asked twice, then it would be either abandoned or amended (“Violet” instead of “Purple”).
What scares me more than almost anything are people like Miss Whatshername. They’re infinitely more dangerous than people might think. Trapped alone with our children, they take impressionable minds and try to mold them, to bend them into their own specific worldview. Not by reason or explanation, but by the imposition of their dominance and authority.
There is no more reality to the word “Violet” than there is to the word “Purple.” Colors, after all, are really abstract concepts. They’re so abstract that one can’t adequately describe them to a blind person. The colors as we see them might not even exist were we not there to see them. That is how terribly tenuous these words (all words) are. My classmates and I weren’t saying “Apple” for “Rhinoceros,” we were using a less specific word to describe red and blue mixed together. One that was taught and accepted by most of the world—our teacher’s reaction was insane. Teachers should teach, not merely impose their knowledge upon their students.
There is no Purple. There is no Violet.
“What are all the colors?” Miss Whatshername asked us from her perch near the chalkboard.
“Orange,” someone said.
“Good!” Miss Whatshername said. “Orange is red and yellow mixed together!”
“Green!” another one of my classmates shouted.
“Ah yes, Green!” Miss Whatshername exclaimed. “Green is yellow and blue mixed together!”
“Purple.”
There was an icy silence as the smile faded from Miss Whatshername’s lips. She stood up slowly, like a dazed car-crash victim.
“What? What was that?”
No one said a word. You could hear a…crayon drop.
Miss Whatshername shuffled over to the chalkboard and picked up a hunk of white, furiously she began to scribble on the dusty white surface. I can still hear the shrill squeak of her chalk as she wrote. I can close my eyes and still see her flabby, middle-aged arm wobble as she angrily wrote one word, then another.
The two words were PURPLE and VIOLET.
“This,” Miss Whatshername said pointing at the word VIOLET. “Is a color, whereas this word…Purple…this is not a color.”
She looked at both the world Purple on the blackboard and us with a look of disgust. We were dirty and unrefined, and so was Purple. We began to murmur amongst ourselves, the venom in Miss Whatshername’s voice had both frightened and excited us. Was this woman serious? We’d been calling it Purple for years and no one had ever said a word about it not being a color.
And anyway, wasn't Violet a flower?
Someone got the idea to check the Crayon box—the good people at Crayola had our backs: the paper wrapper said “Purple.” When this fact was pointed out to Miss Whatshername, she became even more agitated.
“There is no such color as Purple and in my class, no one will use that term!” she shouted above the giggling din.
Was this woman insane?
“Purple…”
“No!” Miss Whatshername exclaimed. “No Purple!”
This was the first time I ever truly disagreed with a teacher. This instance was the first time a person in authority seemed completely stupid. It wasn’t just that I disagreed with what she was saying (she was correct in a way, “Purple” is a general, Old-English term…whereas “Violet” is the correct term for the color achieved by mixing red with blue), it was the manner in which she carried herself as she said it. What she was saying blew our little 4th grade minds. We’d been taught by both our parents and other teachers to call Violet “Purple.” The terms are essentially interchangeable in the everyday (read: non-art class) world.
This woman, this Miss Whatshername, was just being an intellectual snob.
Of course I didn’t know this at the time, but that’s what she was. Miss Whatshername was too good for the common “Purple.” Instead, the only word she’d “hear” in her class was Violet. Over the course of the year few of us would test her (those brave souls). They’d ask her for a Purple colored pencil, to see if she’d unthinkingly hand them a “Violet” one…thus establishing that the two were, in fact, one and the same. Or they’d ask her if they’d used too much Purple paint in their surrealistic lunchroom painting.
But Miss Whatshername never fell for it. She never took the bait; instead she’s just stare at them dumbly. Most of the time the question was asked twice, then it would be either abandoned or amended (“Violet” instead of “Purple”).
What scares me more than almost anything are people like Miss Whatshername. They’re infinitely more dangerous than people might think. Trapped alone with our children, they take impressionable minds and try to mold them, to bend them into their own specific worldview. Not by reason or explanation, but by the imposition of their dominance and authority.
There is no more reality to the word “Violet” than there is to the word “Purple.” Colors, after all, are really abstract concepts. They’re so abstract that one can’t adequately describe them to a blind person. The colors as we see them might not even exist were we not there to see them. That is how terribly tenuous these words (all words) are. My classmates and I weren’t saying “Apple” for “Rhinoceros,” we were using a less specific word to describe red and blue mixed together. One that was taught and accepted by most of the world—our teacher’s reaction was insane. Teachers should teach, not merely impose their knowledge upon their students.
There is no Purple. There is no Violet.
Friday, December 25, 2009
Friday, October 30, 2009
Art Appreciation and Me
Whenever I find myself wandering the pristine halls of an art museum I’m always there with someone else, someone who is both better looking than me and more finely attuned to the intricacies of artistic expression. The attractiveness part I can come to terms with; it’s the latter that makes me more than a little jealous. I just don’t have the ability to dissect a painting or see past its surface. At best I’m either pleased or turned off by a shape or a mixture of colors, a nice image or maybe an expression on a subject’s face. I cannot tell what the artist was thinking when he captured the soft circle of a woman’s bare breast, or when someone shattered glass around an iron scaffolding. And instead of experiencing the subtle joy and elation that others feel, I’m left like a hillbilly child visiting relatives in the city, mouth toothless and gaped with uncertainty.
As a rule, I tend to stay away from places that remind me just how uncultured I am — a fine wine tasting, Shakespearean plays, restaurants offering anything other than cheeseburgers or spaghetti — mostly out of fear that I’ll make a fool of myself, that I’ll be found out. At best, the image I’ve carved out for myself through years of careful lies and deceit is one of me keeping up with culture, nowhere above anyone else but barely treading water. In reality, I’m the guy who steps into a fine restaurant wearing a t-shirt reading “I’m not a gynecologist, but I’ll take a look,” and when I’m asked to please leave I’m not sure why. On the rare occasions I’m not dressed like a slob or an overgrown teenager and I do manage to get seated, if I’m not careful a gazing couple might spot me trying like a buffoon to crack open a lobster tail. And so it’s just easier to avoid such places.
Shakespearean plays hold a similar danger. By default anyone looking forward to attending a performance of Shakespeare must have an IQ of 150 or above; as for me, I’m usually dragged there by friends, theater people themselves who can recite perfectly metered love sonnets and soliloquies in their sleep. In high school, though I never would have admitted it then, I was really in the same league as the jocks and the hardcore stoners when it came to matters of Shakespearean tragedy. Had it not been for our textbook’s annotations I would have floundered in the lines of iambic pentameter forced upon us, and even with the textbook’s help when we were asked to write a report on a play it was like being given a handful of wooden blocks and told to build a fully-functioning locomotive. Overcome with anxiety, I might find myself searching the internet for someone’s online notes or, if a deadline was fast approaching, an entire paper that I could purchase and pass off as my own. At live performances that same sense of helplessness falls over me, and before the first act is up I’m listening not to the actors but to my fellow theatergoers, searching for that collective intake of breath that precedes a laugh or a groan, something that they’ve all caught and I haven’t. Then I’ll laugh with them, and keep my charade as a genuine purveyor of intellect and refinement. One of their peers. An equal.
At an art museum, however, it’s a little easier to slide by unnoticed. For the most part museums are quiet places where the people around you have something to look at and distract them from the fraud in their midst.
Several of my friends are quite good at judging artwork; my friend Rusty, an artist himself, can take a look at a painting and tell me any number of things about its technique, placement on the artistic timetable, and its similarity in style to other artists’ works. Whenever he does this, I’m left in awe. “How do you know all that?” I’ll want to ask, but I don’t, because my inquiring would make me seem less upscale and erudite. Instead, I simply nod, scratching my chin as if contemplating, and mumble, “True, true. Yeah.”
Amber, a high school friend of mine, might lose herself in the swoops and circles of a painting for what seems like hours on end. And even without the aid of drugs — prescription or otherwise — she can find something to focus on, something the canvas triggers in her and makes resonate. Meanwhile, I’m wondering what the hell a series of concentric squares scribbled in harsh yellow lines is supposed to mean to anyone, and I’ll look at my watch for the hundredth time to see how soon we’re going to eat lunch.
The one part of the museum I can enjoy is the statues. Although I can appreciate the fine craftsmanship and extensive detail in all of them, my favorites are the ones that appear to have been in severe personal accidents. There’s nothing more interesting than a statue of a woman, staring off to the side longingly, with arms that stop at her elbows, or a bust of a face with its nose and finer features askew and exaggerated. Maybe it’s just the morbid part of me that’s engaged by these, but I find them the most interesting part of the museum experience not because of what the particular artist was trying to express, but because onto them I can project any number of gruesome scenarios.
Here, a woman unfortunately decides to reach under the lawnmower for her fallen wedding band. There, a man realizes too late that the uncaring escalator will not relinquish his dangling shoestrings. And my personal favorite is the baby born with an elongated head to a drug-addled mother, or maybe because of a rare genetic disorder. True, sometimes these ideas don’t exactly make sense, but they make for an interesting way to pass the time. When I’m at the museum, I can’t exactly share these thoughts, as it tends to place upon my listener’s face a look of harsh disapproval followed by a mellower but no less scathing glare of superiority. I’ve learned this time and again after mentioning to, say, the birdlike woman standing next to me, craning forward to investigate each ridge in the clay, or the frumpy professorial man running a hand through his thinning hair as he contemplates the artist’s intention in giving his subject only a top row of teeth.
Instead, I keep my thoughts to myself and try my best to fit in. Just as I would with Rusty, I might find myself staring down a Monet, my eyes held open to increase the chance of them watering. If I’m lucky, it’ll look like I’m crying, moved by the grace and beauty of something so wonderfully captured. If not, I’ll be seen as either the wide-eyed eccentric lost in his ruminations or the out-of-touch sociopath wrangling his twisted visions. Neither, I suppose, is that far off the mark, and they both beat out being viewed, simply, as stupid.
By the time we leave the museum, my compatriot and I, I’m usually feeling tired and weak. Not physically, but mentally, like I’ve spent hours trying to churn out plot points for an entire season of a soap opera. In a way, I guess it is sort of the same, and I have to wonder if that’s similar to what happens with my friends and all those other people who come to look at these pieces of art. Are the experiences they have with a horizontal mosaic of primary colors or a dark-hued portrait of a man dressed in a hooded white robe just their projections reflected back, not so different from me pushing tragedies onto arcane statues? Maybe so, I’ll think, but I’m always ready to move on, to stop thinking so hard. And in stepping out of that brightly lit building so full of creativity and introspection, I find myself wishing that, instead, we’d just gone to see a production of Hamlet, where I’ve almost learned exactly when to chuckle and when to cry.
Friday, October 23, 2009
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