I've been making a point of spending more time with my neglected moleskine the last few evenings (with our good friends Mr. Hi Tec C and Ms. Copic), and it feels great - mostly messing around with some Bridgman-sketches and doodles. For some reason it's been easier to tune out lately.
If you're in the San Diego area this weekend, be sure to stop by the Nucleus booth and wish Ben a happy birthday. And buy some prints or shirts or bags. And meet some awesome artists.
There's a giant airship in our gallery right now. Airships are never a bad idea.
Something incredibly neat: The Totoro Forest Project art show. This show will be in September, hosted by Pixar and features an amazing assortment of artists (some friends, some new). The exhibition/auction will raise funds to support the Totoro Forest Foundation which was founded by Miyazaki. I was lucky/happy to assist with a little bit of web coding that they needed for the artist submissions - I'm in the credits! Anyway, hope to see you at Pixar on September 6th - it will definitely be a memorable evening.
Speaking of Miyazaki, I watched Porco Rosso again last night. Man I love that movie. A pig-faced pilot, love, and adventure over the Mediterranean - what more could you ask for?
Ah, they must-a love-a the Yesus.
Nerd alert: we are in the process of remaking Settlers of Catan, except this one is called Settlers of Arabia. Expect plenty of purposefully-ignorant racism to ensue. I'll take some photos when we start making the pieces.
I really loved the Dark Knight on many levels. It's not a perfect movie, but it's up there with the best of them. Great action, great acting (I know it's a cliche to point this out, but Mr. Ledger's performance is amazing), and great themes. Best of all, it wasn't laced with predictable happy-endingness. I don't like movies where the villain is just unexplainably crazy, and that's that. They've gotta have motivations, reason and purpose. In fact, if you can like certain aspects of the villain, even better. There was a bit of push and pull in the directing... just as Nolan would let the film become intelligent, he'd realize this was Batman after all, and return to a bit of silliness (justifiably so). Still, it leaves me wanting a smart, dark, and brutal film from Nolan outside of the Batman universe. I bet it would rock.
There is a pattern among negative reviews of (extremely) popular movies. They are peppered with an excess of big words. Thesaurus-style words. And overly-complex sentences. They reek of over-compensation. Yuck.
We spent all day (about 10 hours) Sunday at the beach for Mo's birthday - catching frisbees, baseballs and bubbles, eating snacks, napping, lighting fires, and playing what-would-you-rather-do. Another lazy, valuable, Sunday.
Here's an unrelated thumbnail.
We spent all day at the gallery preparing for Systema Naturae II: Submerged. It's a powerful array of artists, and Andrea Offermann's pieces are flooring me - so versatile! Be sure to stop by tonight, 7pm - 11pm.
Happy birthday, Maurene! I am definitely looking forward to occupying all of Sunday with frisbee-ing at the beach.
The iPhone 2.0 update is pretty sweet. Lots of neat little apps to make your phone more useful/fun in the appstore - check 'em out. I was in old town clothes-shopping and the Apple store line was all the way around the block. Crazy.
You know what's awesome? I just spent the last three hours working on a new song, and then Logic crashed and I lost the audio. In my ensuing frustration, I tripped bad over my guitar stand. Apparently it is a non-music evening.
So I'm trying and trying to find something to get excited about, and the closest thing has been basketball, which I am severely enjoying... but it makes me want to punch my damn shins in the shins. I've been doing all sorts of exercises, got some sweet new shoes, some arched insoles, and a shin brace, and it all sorta works but not really. It's a strange feeling to be indignant towards and insulted by your own body parts.
Saw The Fall at Dreamworks last week, and I love it's ambition. The story is so-so but the acting is wonderful - I don't even know if that little girl knew there was a movie in production around her. She was so there.
I ordered Tekkonkinkreet last week on the recommendation of several friends (as well as the Cowboy Bebop boxed set, which the obedient consumer in me had to own), and we watched it at Ben's yesterday. It's a masterpiece of a film. The visuals are a joy from start to finish and they serve the story well. I'm not usually a fan of abstract scenes to depict internal conflict, but they made it work perfectly. Check it out!
Before the movie, we spent the whole day swimming / eating pizza. Armed with a long bamboo stick, a heavy rock, and a plastic bucket, one comes up with such games as: in-water pole-vault challenge, carry rock and walk along pool-bottom, hold rock to chest and sink to bottom, in-water high jump challenge, under-water breathing in air-filled-bucket, and long-distance bucket toss using stick. More days should be spent like this, I think.
If you want to have a conversation about anything science-related, I will never stop you. Not thinking about space, atoms, the human genome, or the future is a real challenge. That said, Amy sent me some videos that I think you might find interesting too.
Michio Kaku's Vision of the Future:
The Century of the Self: