Inked

Working in the motorcycle industry, I've certainly seen my fair share of tattoos, but until now I've managed to keep my skin ink-free. That's all about to change.

You've seen full-arm tattoos, or sleeves. Well, I've decided to get a pant leg. Yep, I'm going to cover my entire right leg with the final frame of Hieronymous Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights. Sure, it's dismal, but I usually wear jeans anyway.

My Flash Mob Idea

About a year and a half ago or so, flash mobs were getting a lot of press. Of course this gave me an idea which, given the warm weather of late, I should probably have brought up a couple of weeks ago. But I didn't remember it until yesterday, so I'll bring it up now and maybe we can make it happen next winter.

I'd like to organize a different kind of flash mob. We -- and by we, I mean any of you who are close to Morgantown, preferably if you have access to a pick-up truck -- wait until we get a very big snow. It needs to be good packing snow, too. When this happens, we all get together with a couple of pick-up trucks and build the body parts of eight snowmen. We don't put them on top of each other, but we do decorate the individual parts with coal, sticks, carrots, holly, or any other cool, bio-degradable stuff we can think of. Then we load up the trucks and wait until the middle of the night. This would work better if it's still snowing, so there will be next to no traffic.

Next, we drive downtown and quickly assemble the snowmen -- two on each corner, opposite sides of the street, at the corners of High St. and Willey, Fayette, Walnut, and Pleasant -- and we take off.

Finally, an photographer accomplice follows us down the street and shoots some photos, just in case some humbug destroys the snowmen before the morning traffic begins.

It's performance art. We take not credit. We only use bio-degradable stuff so we don't break any littering laws. It would be unprecedented; eight snowmen on High St. If we want to really take it to Calvin-and-Hobbes-type levels, we could even make the snowmen on opposite sides of each corner interact with each other.

It could make for a fun evening.

Mingering Mike

I get a lot of press releases, but this one, for a book that's being promoted by a music company called Girlie Action, caught my eye:

Mingering Mike
The Amazing Career of An Imaginary Soul Superstar
Publication Date: May 1, 2007

One cold December morning in 2003, Dori Hadar - DJ by night, criminal investigator by day - was digging through crates of records at a Washington, D.C., flea market. There he unknowingly stumbled into the elaborate world of Mingering Mike - a soul superstar of the 1960s and '70s who released an astonishing fifty albums and at least as many singles in just ten years. But Hadar had never heard of him, and he realized why on closer inspection: every album in the crate - as well as the records themselves - were handmade of cardboard. Each package was intricately crafted, complete with gatefold interiors, extensive linear notes, and grooves drawn onto the "vinyl" - some albums were even covered in shrinkwrap, as if purchased at real record stores.

Hadar put his detective skills to work and soon found himself face-to-face with Mingering Mike nearly thirty years since his last album. Their friendship blossomed and Mike revealed the story of his life and the mythology of his many albums, hit singles, and movie soundtracks. A solitary boy raised by his brothers, sisters, and cousins, Mike lost himself in a world of his own imaginary superstardom, basing songs and albums on his and his family's experiences. Early teenager songs obsessed with love and heartache soon gave way to social themes surrounding the turbulent era of civil rights protests and political upheaval - brought even closer to home when Mike himself went underground, dodging the government for years after going AWOL from basic training during the Vietnam War.

I'm going to have to pick up this book. Meet Mingering Mike.

Check this out

This is a good friend of mine, Jamie Lester, a local sculptor's blog. Today they dedicated a statue of Jerry West that he had been commisioned to do, before the WVU-Seton Hall game. Really amazing stuff. http://www.lestersculpture.com/index.html

If Andy Warhol Worked for the Weekly World News

More Paul Robert Turner

Here's the Paul Robert Turner painting we saw in Toronto. This one is also in the "Don't Panic" series. It's not as colorful as the one posted below, but I still like it better. I find it almost hypnotic.

Don't Panic

By no means am I an art connoisseur, but I know what I like when I see it. This past summer my wife and I went to Toronto for the weekend, and it happened to coincide with the Toronto Outdoor Art Festival. It's an awesome event, and it was probably the highlight of our trip. One of the artists we met there was Paul Robert Turner, and he had a couple of paintings on display there that were part of his "Don't Panic" series. We just couldn't stop looking at one in particular, and if we'd had an extra five grand on us, we probably would have bought it. As is, I'll have to make due with this image, which is Don't Panic 4. (He didn't have this one there.) If I owned this, or the one we saw in Toronto, I'd rotate it 90 degrees every couple of months, just so the poor sap on the ground could change positions every once in a while.