OWhata

Shannon Wheeler is the genius behind Too Much Coffee Man.  I found this one the other day and just love it.

Need inspiration?  Check out these 3 creative endeavors:

Sea Organs Zabar: This is a set of stairs that descend into the coastline at Zabar, Croatia.  They have an internal tube system that permits the water’s organic flux to send sound thru the tubes and report out of harmonically crafted pipe holes along the walkway.  Check out the schematic below and visit this link to hear the sound it produces.  As well, you can purchase a 70 minute disc of the sound at the Sea Organs Zabar site (which is also a pretty unique website design.)

2. Blackpool High Tide Organ: 45 foot tall, concrete/zinc/copper/steel, and its internal structure contains eighteen organ pipes powered by 8 tubes that run directly into the sea.  Gorgeous structure.  Check out the Wikipedia article for more details.

3.San Francisco’s Wave Organ: A clandestine location along the eastern edge of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, this work of environmental art is best heard at high tide around 5am on Saturdays.

[This article was inspired by a post I found at Oddstrument.com.]

I found this art piece on stumbleupon.com - I don’t know who created it or I would attribute.

Without all the booze, misogyny and crippling depression.  Check out http://www.jacksonpollock.org.  It’s a web app that permits you to splash several different colors onto the digital canvas (change colors by clicking on the screen.)  Thanks to Jenny for sending this one to me.  If you start feeling famous, I recommend waiting a few decades before being an adulterous pig, picking up underage girls and wrecking your car. [I don't like Abstract Expressionism...?]

Dale sent me a few of this guys drawings a while back.  Luckily I still had one on my desktop.  I don’t have a link to a site for him because it was a bitch to Google this guy and come up with the Peter Taylor I was looking for - so find him yourself.

Oh yeah, sorry to have vanished.  Things have been rather odd in James land the past few weeks.  Usually life is either good, bad, or neutral - but never a mixed bag.  Lately, I’ve had the party mix and, although I’m quite happy, I’m looking over my shoulder often.  Here’s a short list of what’s happened lately - hit a guy on his bike with my car, ended my contract after 2 1/2 years at the job, getting more freelance work, finished the first cartoon with my production company and sent it off to Adult Swim, met a great lady (of course she’s moving away soon), clean bill of health at the dentist, great parties with great friends, my back healed so my ankle nearly broke…

So, yeah, I’m sorry and still love you all and love blogging.  I’ll be more regular.

Have you any inclination of seeing the film Funny Games?  I don’t want to get too cerebral on it because its…affective.  I literally just got home from seeing it and feel like a different person.  There was James before Funny Games, and now…me.

It’s essentially a sublimely flawless commentary on the grew-up-playing-Grand-Theft-Auto-and-mothered-by-a-television generation that is recently realizing how hollow existence MIGHT be.  If you’ve seen Man Bites Dog and could appreciate its biting suggestions about reality and entertainment, you’ll dig Funny Games.  But buyer beware - this film takes no prisoners, makes no apologies.

Sorry I’ve vanished a bit folks.  Burying those bodies took a while and then I got strep throat AND a sinus infection.  I’m thinking of having my tonsils replaced with walnuts decorated by 2nd graders - some sparkles, rubber cement, perhaps those googly eyes that school art programs can still budget.  OH SHIT - that would be awesome.  I’m also conisdering having a helicopter landing pad tattoo put on the crown of my scalp since my receded hair pattern basically resembles that anyway.

Laugh at this site, Garfield Minus Garfield - it’s shockingly brilliant.

Although I don’t TOTALLY agree with this image’s implications (I’ve turned into a hell of a romantic in my silver years), this is damn funny. I found it on flickr in this image stream: http://flickr.com/photos/unnamed/78537071/in/photostream/

Alan Moore’s book The Watchmen is one of the finest post-modern fiction pieces I’ve ever read.  I just found this image online - it is not a cover that I’ve ever seen.  Go read the book.  Here’s some trivia - what famous political speech that was never delivered did Moore get the title The Watchmen from?  I’m exhuasted and going to bed.  GOOD NIGHT!!!

I’m in a Amedeo Modigliani mood these past few days (a mention in Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown rekindled my interest after years away), especially his portraits of females.  The piercing and haunting eyes, the colors as if you’re viewing a fertile and diverse landscape thru a light rain, the delicate construct of every limb - all of it puts me in a complete trance, the type where you don’t even notice the waitress asking you for the third time if you want your coffee filled (which DID happen to me this morning).  As well, although the females of his portraits possess a sublime tenderness and frailty, Modigliani channels some terrifically subterranean power that is entirely feminine - something matriarchal, Gaiac, and sensual.  If you don’t know about him, start looking at his art and reading up.