Big Um Future

This "fortune teller" was localized for New Mexico. I just thought it was soooo terribly wrong that I had to take a picture and spread the evil. Truck stops in the Southwest flat out rule.

What I Do For Free

These pics are part of a digitization project I've been working on. I'm taking film and caring for it, putting it into a workprint film projector, and digitizing it as part of an archival preservation strategy. I love figuring out what is on the films and helping to keep them accessible for the future. All the films are from a San Antonio photographer/filmmaker in the 1930s...


Here's a screen pic with the possible owner of a ranch, the man who helped bring the Texas longhorn back from extinction.


Here's some cattle wrangling and branding action. Pretty cool stuff.


This one's CRAZY! It's from a parade in San Antonio back in the day. If you look closely, this float has the theme of Little Black Sambo. If this isn't a sign of change I don't know what is. I used to innocently eat at Sambo's restaurant as late as the mid-1970s. One could make the argument that racism has gotten a lot more subtle, but at least it isn't out in the open to poison minds. Well, unless you are a Muslim, that is. It's an understatement to say that it would suck to be an American Muslim right now.

I (heart) Austin

People here aren't afraid to call you out on your shit. Especially when it comes to the environment. Of course this was on an early '80s truck that uses a bunch of fossil fuels, but who's really keeping track, right?

Outsider Art...Outside

This little painting was tacked to a tree near the Menil Museum in Houston. While it's no Keith Haring or Basquiat or even Lee Quinones or Banksy, I always applaud people circumventing the system to get their art works seen.

The Best Piece of Art Ever

This was done by a 5th grader. If it doesn't capture the essence of life I don't know anything that does.

Creature Feature

These are two alligators I saw Sunday just an hour outside Houston. I love crazy animals so close to my home. Sara and I also saw a few Nutria and an aviary's worth of birds.



I took this one in Pecos, Texas. Unfortunately, it took some Wile E. Coyote measures to get the picture. Poor roadrunner was pretty frazzled by the time he let me get close enough to snap this pic.

Call me bwana.

Pulp Motel

Have you ever stayed in a cinder block motel? I'd read about them in old pulp novels, but never really saw one until I got the chance to stay at this one in Sonora, Texas. It was called the Holiday Host and had a huge statue of Lakshmi in the lobby. What sealed it for me, though, was the mint green paint and matching chair.

Goth Cohen

Speaking of Seth Cohen, Judging Amy was playing in the background as I was doing work (it's true! I don't watch that show!), and who should be on but Adam Brody. Playing a "goth rocker." Oh, those pre-O.C. years were very lean. This was in 2001, two years before he played Seth Cohen on the Gilmore Girls (yes, I know that wasn't the character's name, but c'mon!) and a year before he made a little cameo in The Ring.

Classic Brody line from Judging Amy: "What Juliet did was beautiful. Death is beautiful." He was obviously destined for fame from the start.

Brooklyn's Answer to Seth Cohen?

This is celebrated emo culture author Andy Greenwald. I know Andy and went to see him read at BookPeople last night. What I love about this picture is the way he looks like he's nice, but in a second could strike you like a cobra. That's Andy.

Oh and the Austin American-Statesman used their review of his book (reg req'd) to say that people compare him with Seth Cohen, with his "bed head good looks," which is hi-larious.

The passage he read was pretty funny, too. So think about buying it--Andy's really skinny. I think he needs money to eat.

Pornstache

This is my brother. When I saw him he had just lost a whole slew of weight (good on him), but all I could say was, "What the hell is on your face?" He took it in stride telling me that he wanted to look more like a cop (since he really is one). I believe I replied with some comment about mirrored sunglasses, but all I could think was how creepy it looked. Sorry, bro, I don't approve. And I know it breaks your little cop heart.

Angelic Balding Pattern

Persons that this guy isn't:
Toby Zeigler
The knight in Army of Darkness who flinches when Ash is menacing the "primitive screw heads."

This head belongs to a fellow that was nodding off on a bus I was riding. I'm not sure why I became so obssessed with his lolling head, but it could have had something to do with mushy brains at the end of my semester in December. What I didn't get in this picture was the fact that five minutes later his hair looked like wings--like the wings on Apollo's ankles. It was almost beautiful...if only I hadn't on a Greyhound bus I might have shed a tear of joy.

Project Excitement

For the return of Project Runway. That was definitely my new show find last year.

And I'm totally into the update on last year's winner, Jay.

You're either in, or you're out.

Procrastination Post #2: The Origins of Procrastination and Some Drinking

I guess I never explained the title of this and the previous post. My grad school semester, for all intents and purposes, ends as of Wednesday. It's been a great semester and I'm in pretty good shape with my work that's due, but I am also a notorious procrastinator. Which leads me to my other story:

My school is in Austin (UT--er, hook 'em horns!) and my wife lives in Houston. Sara is much smarter than me, so she maneuvered me into taking salsa lessons. She says it's fun and romantic and all that, but I think the real reason is so that she wouldn't have to make the trip up to Austin twice a month. Very cagey, that Sara.

Anyway, I was down in H-bomb as usual and with finals looming, had many intricate plans for study. Well, the router needed to be moved away from the cable modem and my friend was playing out on Saturday night at my favorite Houston venue, Rudyards, and I really haven't been to a show in so long and it would only be for a couple of hours.... You get it.

It all turned out OK, however--a fact I know relieves my one or two readers out there. The band, the Yuppie Pricks, were quite good. I love sneering, '80s style American psychos mixed with some punk rock. And my friend is a great drummer, which is good because I don't like to lie to people and say I like what they do when I really think they are crap.

To wrap up this long masturba-story, I, like my old friend Miss Tanya, really enjoyed about three more Newcastles--one of the few beers that I can drink one after another--than I really should have. Got home at nearly 3 and had to catch a bus up to Austin for a key project meeting that afternoon. I made it and everything was cool. Especially since I had until 5:30 today for study--oops--and I'm sure I will be totally focused after class tonight and will get up really early tomorrow morning and open the book right away....

Procrastination Post #1 : On Things Dave Chappelle

Comedy Central announced that they are airing four shows worth of the skits that caused Dave Chappelle to run away for some spiritual quiet time in South Africa. While I am usually in favor of the artist deciding which of their material should be released, I have to say that I am very curious and excited to see if it's as bad as Dave thought or if he just broke under the pressure.

Don't get me wrong, I think I would have crumpled like a piece of tin foil under the weight of that $50 million deal that he got himself into. And I'm sure there are a lot of nuances to the story that we will never understand. I know a lot of people ask me why I left a job that on the outside seemed amazing, and no matter what I said I know some of them were just internally shaking their head in disbelief. That said, Charlie Murphy has gone on record saying he thought that the material is pretty strong.

So, instead of saying that I don't support the rights of artists, I will spin it with Karl Rove-ian self-serving sinister glee to say that the people should decide whether it is good or not. Give the people what they want, right?

Still love you, Dave. That ain't chocolate--that's doodie, baby!

A Horror of Hoo-ers

Yesterday was a very whore-y day. The Norm McDonald, Artie Lange masterpiece Dirty Work was on, and as I was watching it I couldn't help but wonder, "Why??" If you haven't seen the film, it's classic Norm McDonald--trying to create humor through what most would consider tasteless language. And it works. Anyway, whores and the word "whore" play a major role in the film, but for some reason the film was edited in such a way that "whore" was never uttered in the film. It was edited out over and over again, to the point where it was just absurd. Anyone with a brain could easily figure out what they were saying, but the editor just kept cutting it and replacing it with, if I remember correctly, a woman's name or something. This seems to happen a lot in films that were made in the early to mid-90s when the algorithm for editing films was really complex--all films will be edited as if they will be shown on Saturday afternoon (as this one was), so no matter how ridiculous the movie becomes it will have NO ADULT CONTENT. Unless you can read lips. Or you enjoy playing the game of Figure Out the Missing Curse Word.

Later, as we walked to Rudyards for a beer, I was lamenting the fact that we had missed the Maxim Model Search night at the local sports bar. Sara was confused why I would want to a) go to a sports bar and b) want to have anything to do with a Maxim Model Search. To me it was pretty obvious--sports bar + pathetic model wannabees = a horrorshow of fun. In fact, the extrapolation was murder :: crows as horror :: whores. And who wouldn't want to see a horror of whores, afterall?

Horror Flashback

When I was little--about six years old--I became obsessed with monster movies. Back then I watched the Saturday night creature feature religiously. Most of the films were from the '40s and starred Lon Chaney or Peter Cushing or Boris Karloff. Every once in a while, though, a more modern horror film would sneak through. Where the Wolfman was wrapped in the chaste morality of the time, these late '60s and early '70s films--especially the awesome Hammer Films--were gorier and sometimes had a sexual subtext that even came through on edited local television in Pueblo, CO. Christopher Lee as Dracula with his sexy vampiress sidekicks that give the film an eroticism that forever warped my little brain.

Tonight I saw a Portugese film, Tombs of the Blind Dead, from 1973. Compared to the horror films that further twisted my mind in the '80s and '90s, this zombie flick is pretty tame. But if you look beyond the the slow as molasses zombies and really, really stupid characters who kept stopping and staring, letting the speed-challenged zombies catch up to them, if you look past that the movie was pretty awesome. Why? Well, a Knights of Templar torture scene involving a "virgin" and blood drinking. And if that doesn't get you, how about a crazy morgue assistant who likes to torment frogs?

But the best thing for me was being taken back to when sex felt subversive in a horror movie. When showing a little boob was a transgressive act. Of course the sexual politics in this film were pretty f-ed up--I mean, come on, tearing the clothes off of the virgin and then riding around her nicking her with swords with close ups of a fake boob being slashed and blood gushing out followed later by a woman with lesbian tendancies getting raped by a smuggler and then kind of acting like nothing happened? I mean, I know this was '70s Portugal, but I'm pretty sure if a woman gets raped she might get upset--no matter how manly the smuggler's moustache. Strangely, though, that just added to the weird atmosphere that pervaded horror films--especially European horror films (Fulci, Argento, anyone?)--at that time.

The best part about the DVD, though, was in the Special Features section. There, they discussed how an American B-movie distributor tacked a prologue onto this film that, wildly, tried to tie it to the success of the Planet of the Apes! The extras revealed that this brilliantly insane schlock revision was called Revenge of the Planet Apes. So, instead of Templars, the zombies were apes that were somehow sent back in time to stop the humans before they ruined the earth. Let me tell you, that was one stretch and made the story of this film deliciously ridiculous. I couldn't imagine actually seeing it back then and not burning down the theater afterward.

So do I recommend Tombs of the Blind Dead? Of course I do. Some people talk about how this film is "important" and a "comment on the Franco regime" in Spain at the time, but to me this is just an insane, odd, classic zombie flick at its best.

The Search for the Elusive Camel Toad

A friend posted this on a mailing list, and I couldn't resist. Thanks, Jen-O!

More Monkey Awesomeness

I had to add this. Check out the Helping Hands logo from their website. I can't say enough about the middle icon.



Love the curly tail!

Li'l Buddy

I was in a little town outside of Austin on Thursday just hanging out, walking around looking at the old houses. I saw a guy in a wheelchair who looked like he was pretty challenged. You know how it is--you're pretty curious about what is going on with him but you don't want to stare and make it all awkward. So I ran my eyes over him without staring to take in as much info as possible that could be processed later. As I made the ocular sweep my eyes caught on something strange and furry. Was that a cat's tail wiggling on his shoulder? No! It turned out to be one of my favorite things in the world--a HELPER MONKEY! I know the concept of the helper monkey is pretty old news for most people, but how many have you actually seen in person?

The helper monkey doesn't really have a good rep in popular culture. Most recently one made an appearance in that deliciously wicked Malcolm in the Middle episode with the evil helper that holds Craig hostage. But it's George Romero who probably made the most memorable images of helper monkeys in the genius Monkey Shines. That monkey had a serious possessive side to her that was not pleasant for anyone involved. I don't know about you but I have never heard of real monkeys able to channel and embody their companion's rage. I did once have a girlfriend's cat try to smother me once, though. So if you know anything about helper monkey monsters please post your story in the comments field--I would love to hear it!

I always pictured the helper monkeys as being pretty large--maybe the size of a cat--but this one was tiny. It made me wonder how much help it could really give to this man. My only guess is that it they place the monkeys with the companion early so that they bond and can be trained to the companion's specific needs. This monkey was also wearing a teeny diaper, which made it all the more amazing to see.

Here's a little video introduction for those who have never heard about these helpful creatures: Gizmo & George

Today I dedicate this blog to you, little helper monkey. May you and your companion share many fruitful years together in picturesque Bastrop, TX!

Do Androids Dream of Electric Fish?

These are the coolest things I've seen since the creepy which one is the robot post. I read about it first on Slashdot. Robotic carp that aren't remote controlled and look very realistic in their movements. They're on display at the London Aquarium alongside real fish. Take a look at the BBC news story on them. But if you really want to see them swim, take a peek at their home site, Essex Robotics.