I just thought of an awesome Halloween costume.
Paula Poundstone. A sexy Paula Poundstone.
Maybe I can get a group together and we can go as the roster of the 1989 season of HBO One Night Stand. C’mon guys… who wants to be Larry Miller?
I am an angry person with a cold black heart filled with rage and despair, but there are two things I love: the inscrutable ridiculousness of the Japanese nation and wacky rock-and-roll exploitation movies.
I do not speak Japanese for real so I do not know what’s actually going on in this trailer. It features a fictional band called “The Tightsmen” that would be a good index of worst-case-scenario, unflattering haircuts. The Peppermint Engine is taking screenshots to their barbers as I type.
“Group Sounds” (GS) refers to mid- to late sixties Japanese “garage rock.” A weird chimera of matchy-matchy haircut/outfitted sunny lads and bizarro psychedelia that grew out of The Beatles appearance at the Budokan in 1966. The odd label was coined to minimize embarrassment (the leading killer of Japanese!) created by the pronunciation minefield “rock and roll.”
The Spiders tribute to psychedelia and being confused.
For actual information instead of my unresearched opinions, check out this bilingual resource site or The Video Beat! Movie Page of Info which also has ordering info for GSploitation films such as: WILD SCHEME A-GO-GO, BIG COMMOTION!, HI! LONDON, and HEY YOU, GO! (all of which sound like movie form titles). In the US, if you’re lazy, you’ll probably just have to make due with the high-art, low-rocking-out nonsense of Tokyo Drifter to fill your Japanese psychedelia tank.
But really, a movement is hardly worth discussing unless they’ve sold out and devoted their teen rebellion to selling things so here’s a contemporary commercial for sweaters and jump cut editing (and no GS, so my transition was pointless)—
But let’s go back a couple years and see what the kids were so hopped up about rejecting. A perfectly jazzy animated clothes commercial where dresses turn into hot air balloons and flocks of doves.
I’m probably not going to put every wallpaper here as I do them. You’re better off just going directly to Flickr to see them. I’ve already missed three of them from last week.
Here’s one
Here’s this week’s:
You can go back and find the others I’m skipping yourself. I want to blog about other things, like Russian Law and Order (the show, not the concept) and my class performance last night (they did pretty well!)
So, this song is on the Joe Meek collection that, like, everyone has, but it never even occurred to be that there was a VIDEO (or televised lip-synced performance) of it.
So much to love here. Uncomfortable-looking rock band in suits (one of whom inevitably has giant nerd specs… the Shadows had one of him too). Choreographed guitar movements. Weird avant garde framing on a minimalistic set. Underfeatured big-beehived girl drummer. Song produced by closet-case lunatic techno-wizard murder-suicide.
Watch it 10000 times.
I left Mitchell’s plate empty so you can put what you want on there. I recommend making it your desktop and piling icons right on top of it..
In case you need a refresher:
Welcome to my Study #1
Welcome to my Study #2
Welcome to my Study #3
Welcome to my Study #4
Welcome to my Study #5
They’re boring. I couldn’t watch more than five consecutive minutes but between rapey rape on a rerun of Law and Order: SVU and a deadly-dull “Big Chill” inspired Cold Case, I flipped back to catch Lutz’s Mii in the SNL writers’ roll call, Tommy Smothers looking oddly the same as he has for the last 20 years and about two second of a “comedy bit” involving ripped clothes and Shatner. But not clothes being ripped OFF Shatner, which would be worth watching.
I checked online later and saw Mad Men won Best Drama. So, bully for them. Six Emmys in their first season. So, I’m drawing six illustrations this week in arbritrary reference to/homage to that. Check the Flickr this week to see those.
I got to wondering about the real life advertising awards—The Clios—which I for some reason though went the way of the Cable Aces back in the 90s, but they’re still chugging along under new owners. I suppose my half recalled memory of the Clios faltering might have come from stories like this about the 1991 awards, which I hope to find more eyewitness reports of… sound ama-aaa-azingly terrible. Like all thing associated with the advertising industry.
Note, however, this year’s Clio Awards WISELY honored the great achievement in visual poop jokes found in this All Bran commercial. He shits pipes! Between this and the barrage of non-nominated Activia commercials, 07-08 will be remembered as the year constipation broke.
So, I’ve been doing this project for a while now (drawing a scene from every new second season episode of Mad Men) and for the first time it’s a rerun as the Emmys are scheduled opposite.
I have a distaste for award shows (unless there’s a chance I might win something), so I need something else to occupy my time. I’m taking requests for desktops (and iPhone wallpapers) to put up in lieu of a new Season 2 illustration. It can be from this season, last season, a made-up scene… some different show entirely. Leave a comment and I’ll consider it.
Some have already posted theirs here and here in the comments.
I’m also open to PAID work. I’m very grateful and thrilled with the attention in the blogosphere, but I haven’t done anything for money since Gavin’s flyer. I’ve gotten interest and given quotes, but no one has pulled the trigger.
Don’t make me go back to freelance ADing for Pharma (if they would take me back).
If you want to know why I love the movie Lord Love a Duck, pretty much the entire movie is summarized in the opening credits and you can jump right to it at 1:55.
I have the soundtrack to this movie on LP that I won off eBay. Neil Hefti. It’s just this song over and over with slight variations. Faster. Slower. I think I listened to it once.
Everyone I’ve ever loaned this to has hated it, but it’s in my personal top 10 beloved movies. Because it’s completely batshit insane.
I saw this movie in a class in high school taught by a teacher who was so wonderful and influential on me I have to imagine he probably was secretly fucking kids or something on the side. (That’s inevitably the kind of downer stuff that comes out 20 years later.) He delighted in corrupting/humiliating students; making the most awkward, shy girl read the masturbation scene in The Rocking Horse Winner aloud and that kind of thing. He taught a film class at my high school which was mostly an excuse to show really super bizarre rare films (on 16mm, not DVD) from his massive collection.
This scene of Lord Love a Duck was particularly the favorite of the dirtbags in the class who requested it be shown again immediately after. (I point out that the guy in the scene with her is father)
Mad Men Season 2, Episode 8 Desktop Wallpaper. Currently untitled. I’m working on it.
Well into Tuesday and still no Episode 8 on iTunes. Luckily I saw it on Sunday at Nate Shelkey’s, but I don’t have an reference images to draw from. I found a bootleg low-res version of the episode on the internet but it was far from ideal.
This is my first new wallpaper after the SURGE of viral interest and I can’t help but feel I didn’t rise to the occasion.
Incidentally, you know that unseen "Mitch" who’s unhappy about Harry’s raise and is rumored to accuse Harry of "gold-bricking?" It’s totally this guy.
The dorkiest ever rock parody version here, or for iPhone.
Order a prints of this series from zazzle.com or download the Mad Men Icons.
—-
Next week is a rerun, so you tell me what desktop wallpaper you want to see. It can be from this season, last season, a made-up scene… some different show entirely. Leave a comment and I’ll consider it.
I’m trying out a new print-on-demand service called Zazzle, where people can order your art on anything from posters to skateboards. And the consumer can customize them.
Right now there’s a couple Mad Men prints which you can order up to four feet wide.
If anyone has ordered anything from Zazzle before, let me know how the quality is (and how it compares to CafePress)
Song’s nothing special, but the use of kuroko (after the first scene) make this a Japanese delight. Like mochi.
We had kuroko in NeoTokyo Girl Crush! 2040.
(via Tokyo Mango)
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/champagne-supernova-in-the-subway/ (12 down)
http://www.kottke.org/08/09/mad-men-wallpaper
http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/49482430/joans-new-technology-this-is-already-making-my
http://www.designobserver.com/ (side bar, about 7 down from top)
http://meghanagain.tumblr.com/post/49478045/mad-men-illustrated-a-set-on-flickr
About 50000 mentions on various people’s twitter (no link for that)
This was an odd week.
So, it’s a week after 9/11/01… what’s on your coffee table?
Ok, fair enough. Never were much of a deep thinker. Let’s just leaf through the pages and take our mind off the…
Waaaahhh! The world will never be the same again! Why, Danny! Why weren’t you given a chance! Because we let the terrorists win! Blaughhh!
(based on a magazine I found in my shelf while cleaning up… not entirely sure why I have it. )
Finally, the Japanese have embraced me as much as I have embraced/mocked them—
http://www.kanshin.com/keyword/1527832
The gist that I got from internet translators is that I used to work at Modern Humorist, my Mad Men illustrations have been well-received on the internet and Cakey is a show I made. I might be more than one person. My name comes from that of a dynamo generator. My website’s name means “who are not boyfriend” and at the end—“A little attracted to the KW not uncommon for persons to register. ”
If anyone can manage a better translation I’d appreciate it. Also anyone willing to translate my response please contact me.
(It occurs to me to take a detour and do a desktop for The Loved One now that I have a Robert Morse vector)
Best episode of the season! After a real snoozer last week, this one is fantastic. There’s a weird flashback of Don looking Glengarryish… office shenanigans… Rich made to sweat it out again by one of the bosses and no Pete at all and no draggy boring sex scene weighing it down.
But the single criterion by which I judge all episodes as good vs. bad: did someone throw up in the episode? “Red in The Face” and “Nixon vs. Kennedy” both top my favorites for last season by this standard—copious vomit in both of them.
While the brief upchucking in this episode had its surprised spoiled by Silvija texting it to me right before and was neither Creme de Menthe green nor witnessed by a Nixon campaign manager, it was a lovely capper to a superior episode.
So I did two desktops because I liked the episode so much. Hooray for you, Mad Men, I knew you could do it.
