I've started to play with Google pages

A bit buggy but maybe it'll turn into something for the whole world to use

Cowtown

Valentimes Updated

Fuzzy Wallpaper Skull Cookie
Originally uploaded by lex10.

Valentimes updated to include more holidays!!...

My Mexican Lobby Card !

Saw a great collection of Mexican Lobby Cards at Stephen Worth's ASIFA blog. Great stuff. He challenged readers to identify elements that made them effective - that grabbed me- so I took a Jim Thompson paperback cover and another scifi paperback cover - and voila'! Completed at 11:05 EST (note my comment time @ ASIFA - I rushed it - even with a bathroom break). See the real ones at: http://www.animationarchive.org/2006/03/media-more-fun-mexican-lobby-cards.html
Picture's also a link to the collection of real ones!!

Comedy's Bryan Ferry - Vic Reeves - Yo, Americans!

Vic Reeves' Big Night Out on BBC in the 90's was like the misbegotten spawn of The Tonight Show and Pee Wee's playhouse. Really funny - and it rocked. Just like this can't-get-it-in-USA disc.




There's too much to say here, but I think the jackhammer on "Oh, Mr. Songwriter" (Vic's theme) sums it up.

Buy it here at my Amazon store - or else!

Spangrish - Spanishy Engrish

This came of a label from a bottle of Granacha - a Spanish Grenache.

This is a beautiful letter pressed label - the Spanish do an exquisite job with this kind of printing. The misspellings and phraseology are delicious.

It is "fleshy in mouth", eh? Pics are links to hi res versions.
Buenas noches, amigos.

The UK is another dimension

Here' a curious little chicken/egg phenomena: Bend Me, Shape Me, - a massive hit by The American Breed in the US when I was a little kid, but at presumably the same time a hit in England by another group, Amen Corner. The weird part is that the vibe is completely different for each song. When I was in the UK I saw they were always doing this - a commercial (an advert) for "Hits of the 60's" would come on, and it would be all, "King of the Road by Rory Flanksbury! - Streets of Laredo by Rupert Clive! Devil in a Blue Dress by Larry Lawrence and the Lads! - AND MORE!!" It was like (sometimes) the US didn't exist, then next minute life would be a hailstorm of Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Humphrey Bogart and Elvis memorabilia


- Giva lissen.

PS: Listen to just the left track of the American version, and Voila' You've got Karaoke....

Hip Pocket Records

Originally uploaded by lex10.

As shown in my earlier Wilson Pickett post here's a link to a photoset of some hip pocket records. Sealed, no less.

Heritage Village Map

I had this map of Heritage Village from a friend who was cleaning out his office years ago. Thought it was an interesting artifact of the Jim & Tammy Faye Bakker scandal. In my day crazy preachers didn't call for assassination of foreign officials, they built amusement parks!! Amusement parks that could save your soul - ot at least give it a good buffing. It' huge - about 2MB so brace yourself. I photoshopped the seams a little, but very hard to scan . Enjoy - or not.

Ya think?

Mr. Sonic - Weird & Lost Oddity

OUT OF PRINT - Danish. I know nothing about this. It's sample-y with classic blurbs - worked well. Don't construe my musical tastes as being this, but "supermarket, television, home" is strangely heartwarming and beautiful. Did I say oddity?

A Flower?!?!?!?!?

Red Red Groovy. OUT OF PRINT- an injustice.

Used and New starting at $.01. Psychedelic music at its best - it emerged during a great lull in music - when jerks were in control. This album always foud its way into the Techno bin, which was a fundamental mistake, but there was no actual appropriate slot for them. While Chemical Brothers a "Techno" group, can do really rich psychedelic music, (think, "The Test") we all know that about halfway through one of their albums they turn on the drum machine and go out for coffee. (I dunno, maybe I'm just not 20 & on E) Red Red Groovy, on the other hand, creates a roiling, textured kaleidoscope of uberdeliciousness.

Here's the cover:

It's a link to a hi-res foldout image

Here's an image from inside the booklet that comes with it.

Ecch. I can't stand it. It's too good. here's a fansite

One Laissez-ing les Bontemps Roulez more....

Went to see the Zulu Krewe. At the end of their ride, we went all the way to the end with them, where they threw out whole bags of stuff. That's how I got these necklaces. We gave 'em out for Hallowe'en & the next year kids said, "This is the Zulu house! Zulu! Zulu!

Behold the King Cake Baby

I was working in Louisiana. It was a bad deal. But-
Louisiana was amazing. I would get out of my truck while "Mardi Gras Mambo" was playing to go & eat red beans and rice with a pork chop & sport peppers, served by 300 pound ladies with 100% gold teeth. "Poke Sallet Annie" played the minute I left seeing Pulp Fiction for the first time. "Nicky Hoeky" would play - whenever. I would eat a gator po' boy in a place with cable spools for tables and Shaquille O'Neal's shoe in a glass box. It was like a steaming, spanish moss covered movie set.

Then it was Mardi Gras. It's not like anywhere else in the US when this happens. Green Gold ad Purple everywhere - like some new holiday in another dimension. Being gripped in the fever of events, I sent a King Cake home to my family, and I guess I didn't explain fully that there was a little golden baby baked inside and that whoever got the baby would have good luck.

After my family consumed the cake and I asked by phone, "Who got the baby?" my wife commenced to search through my smallest daughter's soiled diapers for it - because there wasn't one.........or was there?

Luck. Funny stuff.

There Are OnlyTwo Rules

Number one is: "No writing on the walls."
Number two is: "Obey all rules."

Hi-YOP-pah-Hah!

A Walk Through My Town In February.

Spooky Head In the Attic
Originally uploaded by lex10.

My town is struggling to strike a balance. It used to be like Harvest Home - people knew when you were an outsider and you stayed that way. Time wounds all heels, though. I've come to see that insularity as beneficial when faced with burgeoning jerk developers who cannot see the next empty patch of earth as anything but a McMansion twisting and torturing the law in order to destroy the atmosphere of this place. Progress stemming from a lack of insularity has given us rubber sidewalks so people in wheelchairs can get to the doctor, sidewalks that don't push children into the street at intervals and Fireworks on July 4th. In the old days they just would've left it & no complaining allowed 'cause that was proof you didn't fit in. I love it here and I hope it doesn't get absorbed by the amoeba of progress. I love it here.......

Tadanori Yokoo

Here's the link to one of my favorite artists - Tadanori Yokoo. Ever since I was 17, my vision of what art should be has been just a little..... tainted by his existence.

Rubbing up on punk fame in the last century

I was going through my old cassettes (the covers I made for which can be found HERE when I came across a store bought gem: Put out by a company that only distributed via cassette. I think I dropped my band's demo off there once.

Valentimes.......

Cupcakes- by my daughters

pic's a link to set....

Scopitones - via me - now get clickin' !!

The Scopitones website is really cool. I saw one of these machines once when I was a little kid out to dinner with my parents. My Dad was in the restaurant business so we were eating in the same place a couple of nights (for free). My Mom, one evening while we were there, got a sausage (kind of like a breakfast sausage really) in her shrimp cocktail - all sorts of innuendo and recognition of bad luck/disgustingness ensued. But I just wanted to see that Scopitone - they wouldn't let me because the content was too risque' But somehow a jukebox that played movies just blew my mind.Here's "Trapped in the Web of Love"... Why Joi Lansing you ask? Three words: Mrs. Lester Flatt. And while in this clip she's supposed to be moved instead she just seems - angry. Funny! or Funny. (if you will) Thanks to Spike @ Scopitones!

Old stuff - new skins

Here's some old pages of mine moved over to my site. Clic the pic for a direct link to oldness.

George Liquor

Go here: - it's a Dutch guy who had the presence of mind to save all of the George Liquor Episodes from the old Spumco site (which sadly is no more). John K. is amazing and doing the exquisite Ranger Smith on Cartoon Network. Watch 'em.

The Foshay Building

Went to Minneapolis. Didn't know what to expect. It was like a cold Brasilia - super modern. In the middle of all that hypermodernity was the Foshay building. It's old-timeyness in the middle of Gattaca was what made me take the picture. When I got home I read the backstory at Lileks. 

I'm in the groove now, baby!

Hey - how's my exclamation points working out? Pretty awesome, no? Well, here's the next one - U-Roy. Not U-Larry or U-Linda but U-Roy. I (and I) had hitched out west (instant way to be murdered nowadays) and read a whole big article on the Rastafarians on the way; U-Roy was a subcomponent of the whole "reggae-as-religion" concept. Now I think all - excuse me - ALL religion (I hit my keyboard key extra hard during the "ALL") are a waste of time or a highway to a suicide bomb or just not for me - do what feels good for you. But U-Roy remains a constant. Blah blah Blah - precursor to rap - blah blah blah toastmaster a la' Lee Perry - blah blah blah seminal influence - who gives a crap, this is the best song ever. Lissen.

 

Bad Andy !! Better yet, Supa-bad Andy !!!!!!!!!

The song Mama Guitar is from A Face in the Crowd, a movie that Andy Griffith starred in. It's really cool - hard to believe good ol' Andy Taylor could be such a badass. This song is in the background of a scene where a leering Andy (playing "Lonesome" Rhodes) watches a twirling contest. The juxtaposition of the music and the look of Lonesome's ill-intent crescendo exquisitely uncomfortably. This is why we watch [good] movies: something is being said on many levels at once and the whole of that experience is worth more than the sum of the parts (so let's add to that juxtaposition the mise-en-scene & cutting). Mama Guitar is a far cry from his "What it was, was football" bumpkin routines. It rocks!

Horton Heat !!

Went to the House of Blues in Atlantic City. Deplorable shakedown by guards in the beginning after a 17 mile march past casinos - Dan Akroyd will roll over in his grave when he dies. Great show. Supersuckers came down on the empty garishness of Atlantic Shitty and Itelligent Design (Comparing jackalopes to Adam & Eve). It was Eddie Spaghetti's son Quatro's birthday - and my son's too henceforth known as "audience member". Heat came out and stopped the show in the middle to refute someone on their forum who said they had the same playlist for 10 years by playing 45 minutes of requests - after having played their whole Christmas album. Yike. Any way the old VGA cam came with me disguised on my keychain & since it takes such crappy photos I turned it into a rockin slideshow.

Smashed Nokia

Beautiful Abstraction from a toxic workplaceMy last job was destroying me. People. Anyway, I smashed my phone in anger, (it got fixed!) and when a friend suggested that "It was art - like you like!" I created a series of photographs that captured the experience of looking at the unit from behind the wheel of my car. I worked the whole thing out as a piece for display as an assignment from a leadership coach who, it turns out, could care less whether I finished it while parenting, working out and working more than full time. It was like a Chinese restaurant picture menu with the stages from the animated gif as individual backlit images. She got paid,

Panorama Bicycle Ride

Frequently Bicycling past here........This is Harrisonville lake. I took shots with an 8mb VGA camera and spliced them together. Old-timey-style. The softness is attractive to me. Click on the pic for link to full-size.