Art For the Hell of It.

Well, my semester of oil painting is now up. And thus looms the question, “do I or did I have the stuff to go to art school…? And do well?”

Well I think so, but you may all judge for yourselves. Keep in mind the camera doing the shooting is less than a megapixel, is a work of crap. (They’re listed in the order painted. Clicky for biggy)

1 2

3 4

5 (my Favorite)

I dunno, not bad for a guy who’s never weilded a brush before in the name of art. Still, I guess it’s good that I didn’t go to art school… otherwise I wouldn’t have met all my friends. They’re neat-o. (insert awe).

Gallipoli

For a short time in 1915 British, French, Australian, New Zealander and Turkish soldiers killed themselves over a few stretches of beach, vying for the goal of Constantinople, aka Istanbul.

Gallipoli is a dated book, written in the 1950s it still makes reference to the now defunct U.S.S.R. It is however rich with information and interesting facts. Moorehead doesn’t just tell this story of bitter defeat and pointless death from the side of the Brits or Turks; nor just from the side of the soldiers or politicians. Rather he encompasses all sides: common soldiers on either side of the trenches, the political forces in Britain and Turkey, the Officers of either Army and the inner wars between the agendas of those men who were caught up in what seemed the battle of a life time and which is now more than a mere obscure foot note in the pages of the dead. He describes the geography of Gallipoli and the strategic routes each side took in their campaigns against each other in words as good as any.

It is one of the most interesting books I’ve ever read, a fact illustrated with my almost having finished the book 8 months ago in Denver International waiting for my flight to Riverton. For its tremendous insight and fact-laden pages I’m going to give Gallipoli a 5. If you can read, you might want to check this book out.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

It’s not often one gets to watch two very messed up movies in a single night, but my peculiar tastes in movies were more than enough to assure such a happening on one April 10, 2004. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind was the second feature of the evening. It chronicles the life and supposed secret life of Chuck Barris, creator of such past TV hits as The Gong Show, The Dating Game, and The Newlywed Game.

He also claims to be responsible for the deaths of 33 people while working as an "independent contractor" (read: hit man) for the CIA. It’s the kind of movie that secretes a strange sort of bizarre craziness that only the written word of Hunter S. Thompson could match. And believe me, no matter what kind of odd energy you might have working for you, watching Confessions before you go to sleep (at 3AM) will only go on to make those energies even more eccentric.

Entertainment value alone is enough for a 6 on the NWOt rating scale, but it doesn’t stop there. In utter weirdness it excels like few other films I’ve ever seen (2001: A Space Odyssey and Where the Buffalo Roam come to mind). And for that it has to rate as one of my favorite films.

Needless to say, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind tops the scale, if not surpasses it. I recommend highly that you rent or buy the video/DVD.

Where the Buffalo Roam

But it’s true, all too true, my friend. Straight from the dawn of the 80’s (1980, to be exact) Where the Buffalo Roam has, yes, Bill Murray playing a very convincing Hunter S. Thompson. The actor assigned to play Thompson’s deranged lawyer/counter part Oscar Zeta Acosta however did not truly absorb the tweak driven, rage fueled Samoan craziness that Benicio Del Toro achieved in the 1998 feature, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Still the movie was a stellar piece of drug-motivated mania typical of all things Thompson. The movie itself is relatively disjointed, bouncing from some drug and arms deal between Zeta Acosta and some subversive Mexican homosexual to Thompson’s removal from the 1972 Presidential Campaign (if you listen closely, you might detect a strange sort of love - hate undertones Thompson had/has for Nixon.)

On the NWOt scale it’s going to get a 5 1/2. The overall film had all the things necessary to make it both entertaining as well as deeply, deeply weird. However, the unfortunate casting for Zeta Acosta (called "Lazlow in this film") simply was not up to task. I think the man did the best he could, but still could not fully capture the primal psychosis that Del Toro seems perfectly at home at.

Regardless, I recommend you utilize every available measure at your disposal to watch Where the Buffalo Roam and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

There And Back Again and There Again Yet Again - III:2

Right now I should be painting. I’m taking an oil painting class this term - I may have mentioned it.

But one of the disadvantages of commuting to school is that nagging problem of not actually getting there - especially when mass transit is in the mix. I had missed my first bus by seconds, and with arthritic ankles and sore back, I’ve deemed running after the bus beneath me. The next bus was full up only to be followed by a bus planning to go only half the route then go home.

The connecting bus was no better - 3 scheduled busses never appeared. For the benefit of the MTA who should (but won’t) like to know which lines these are the s44 and s62. Both notorious for missing each other and everything else by a stones throw.

Now, only 20 minutes late for the class, I march from the front gate into the heart of the campus. For those who don’t know the layout you have to remember that the campus was once the infamous Willowbrook State School for Mental Defectives (read: insane asylum), and resembles a medieval fife - central structures surrounded by acres of fields and a 10 foot wall. Normally there’s a bus inside the campus to take people around, but it too was missing.

So after a brief bout of diarrhea (’tis true I say) at the first building I came too, I was now about 40 minutes late - which makes me absent no matter the circumstances - which means now I take a -1 letter grade - which I don’t care.

I’m taking the class for my benefit and my benefit alone. Plus, I seem to be the only one not liking my work, so I’ll still come out well. It’s not that I’m a perfectionist in this case and feel my work is inferior. I just don’t care much for impressionism. As the old-just coined-saying goes: “What do you get when you teach a Renaissance fan Impressionism? A punch in the face!”

And with this string of luck, something bad would probably happen anyway. My easel is the worst of the lot; my canvas shifts with every brush stoke. So you know today would be the day it all collapsed and cause the domino effect… sending the last easel of the row into the fire alarm, thus setting of the sprinklers and washing way the entire semester… as well as rotting the fur on the taxidermied animal models.

But really now, the whole attendance thing needs to be adjusted. Most schools these days fail you if you miss xClasses. Some teachers just deduct grades. I see it as this when you are over your cut limit - if you get a B (3.0) or better, your absences are cleared; if you get an A+ (4.0), you get your tuition back. Everyone else fails if they don’t show for class.

Remember, there are those who have perfect attendance and still pull in a 0.2GPA!