"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Having just snuggled up to watch Bette Davis' Oscar scoring classic Jezebel (1938)



I was disappointed not only at the film's black and white filming - the entire film hinges on Davis' protagonist, bitchy Southern belle Julie, appearing at a virginal dress coded ball in a slutty red dress - but also at the misquoting of the famous freedom of speech maxim:

"I disapprove of what you say,

but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Julie's ex-beau Pres unsuredly credits it to Voltaire, a French enlightenment writer and philosopher made famous following his adoption of his pen-name 'Voltaire' and his publication of plays, poetry, novels, essays, historical and scientific works in the social reform and freedom of speech vein.



This was a man that had many great things to say on freedom of speech, however he did not say this, his biographer coined the phrase in her 1906 The Friends of Voltaire to illustrate his views more concisely.



S.G. Tallentyre was in fact British and female writer Evelyn Beatrice Hall, ironically posthumously made famous not for her writing prowess or the creation of this illuminating phrase, but because she is forgotten to have ever written this at all.

Buy this album.

Lydia - Illuminate




No words can possibly come close to describing how much I love this album, it's got encapsulations of ecstasies, depressions, turbulence and dreamy nostalgia all covered, gorgeously layered music.

But here's why you should buy it -

Singer Mindy White posted a blog detailing the making of the EP[2]:

I know you guys are eager to hear it…. & we are excited as well. But some are more stoked to find it online to download it. I know it’s hard to get it if we aren’t playing your city ..but here’s the story behind the “Hotel Sessions”. We had over $1200 dollars stolen from us on this tour. It’s been a struggle with trying to make gas to each show & all. We knew we had to do something to makeup for the money stolen. The only idea we had was to sell exclusive songs only available FROM US. They’re legitimately recorded in the hotels & in the van on drives. It does suck to know that the songs will probably leak, which will enable some people to get them without buying them at shows. So if you can come out and actually get them from us, that’d be amazing. There it is in a nut shell. Hope you guys enjoy em.

The People Vs. Larry Flynt

Sorry. Epic fail on the return to the bloggasphere with a failsafe post about a film, but hey, it's a bloody good film.

None of this arty farty the-cinematography-is-the-film or conceptual B.S., simply a bloody good story courtesy of the man America called "pervert" but who managed to accumulate a net worth of $400 million circa 2001.



The People Vs. Larry Flynt is a biography of a pervert doing his best to upturn the US system of PC behaviour and censorship, and suceeding, Woody Harrelson kicking ass as the eponymous protagonist, entrancingly vulgar alongside Courtney Love as his adored, drugged-up to the eyeballs and amusingly disheveled wife.



But my reason for watching this is the divine Edward Norton, oh as beautiful and as geekily intelligent as ever. This is a man who has a bachelors' in History from Yale, he has been engaged to Courtney Love and Salma Hayek, runs and wins marathons, and is a stoic environmentalist???! And famed for the awesome Fight Club, American History X and Primal Fear...





He also invigorates that vague urge in me to be a lawyer. To use mere words to convince the Supreme Court of the USA to let side with their favourite pervert is just awesome.



Oh, and Larry Flynt has a $80,000 gold-plated wheelchair. Badass.

Broccoli

Trying to draw again...

A friend in need

Been helping perpetually procrastinating Tom Rob with his art history essay, he'd doing Storm Thorgerson, he of the Dark Side of the Moon spectrum and the myriad of crawling girls on Giant's Causeway for Led Zep's Houses of The Holy, gorgeous dad rock juice.



He also did the cover for the incredible Mars Volta's De-Loused in the Comatorium, Absolution by Muse, and some funky shit for the legendary freakshow P.Gabriel, and some other cool beanz.





I don't really like his stuff, but like Tom Rob have an appreciation for his obvious mad skillz in his creations, they have this evocative weirdness that is blatantly idiosyncractic, you can spot one of his a mile off.



He tends to do multiples, and melds obscure juxtapositions with even more incongruous situations... all very surrealist, and yet using photography, questioning reality in general, and evoking MC Esther and Dali, noice one.

Also, I love trees.

I ♥ My Dad. More than anyone.

Favorite photos of our day at the Duck Pond.

The girl is named after a cheese AND...

http://www.thefixfixfix.com/fix/index.php/2010/02/brie-and-her-custom-fabd-fixie/


"Brie takes a spin on her road proven ride. Sporting a Pake frame, Sugino cranks, deep V’s, custom fabricated bars, and a fat motorcycle chain, she worked as messenger for Commited Couriers in Cleveland Ohio for 6 years before making the trek to LA."

Work In Progress.

For the Well Weapon juicebox.

It's my Grandpop :)

Bike Porn

Mmmmm <3

LLAMAS NOT TOYS

Literally couldn't keep this one to myself :)
Ferg, you know what I am thinking!

Off to Bishopthorpe Road...

A friend is one who knows us, but loves us anyway.

— Fr. Jerome Cummings

"I've fallen face-first into a painting"

Some recent pictures...
Now shuttup Dozza.

Trying to emulate Anselm Keifer...



I'm doing a project on the Holocaust, using Metzger's praxis as an influence and messing around with what ink can do.

Water effects-





Kids with the star of David.



Wallpaper project -



The obligatory, hilarious llama for Esther, the light of my life.

Ericailane

Finished my epic art history essay today, after listening to This Town Needs Guns on repeat about 50 times, my sanity is back and to celebrate I'm laying off the theory for a while to focus on the aesthetic delights of illustration.



Ericailane is a cool Italian kid active in an art collective in Bologna, and has an awesome ouevre of etchings, graphic art, animations, sculptures, installations, tattoos and drawings.


One Dollar Small

Obviously inspired by Victorian children's illustrations, his work is surreal and oddball, not quite kitsch, cute or adorable as wee rodents illustrated gorgeously usually are, but anthropomorphic to a point where they become acceptably macabre.


Lepus timidus


collaboration with street artist Blu in Camden Town


Sewing

Referencing Orwell's Animal Farm, sneaky foxes endeavor to stab in the back and tailored rats risk shock amputation for a dollar bill.



But if I'm going to be honest I just covet his skilled illustration, and whilst trying to get my own mad skillz at drawing reinvigorated, I find him an inspiration.

Nuit et Brouillard, 1955

If you are of a sensitive disposition I advise you never to watch this film.
They have used this film as a teaching aid in French schools for many years...



Alain Resnais' film encapsulates the horror of the concentration camps by juxtaposing b&w footage of 'inmates' to modern photography of Auschwitz and Majdanek as they stand today.

There is content here that they do not tell you in textbooks. It makes you sick to your stomach how certain plans could ever have been dreamed of, never mind even put into action.

There's footage of Himmler and his cronies nonchalantly perusing diagrams for the gas chambers, calmly discussing how effectively they can eliminate thousands of people.

And there's stills of the victim's themselves, and how they were hence turned to ash via the enormous ovens which showered the camps with a snow-like dusty film.

"Like buttons and pins, this mess we're in dissolves in time..."

New friends are wonderful. Easy/Lucky/Free...



Make me feel even more like this crazy kid.



Listening to - Pulp Fiction soundtrack, The Velvettes, This Town Needs Guns, The Knife (always)

More juicey snippets from Gustav Metzger

A walk in the woods.

The Supermarket as a surrogate for picking berries in the woods.

Low down, but accesible.

A new market - nature surrogates.

The bath as a sustitute for the glades -

Jacuzzi.

Gustav Klimt - The Blood of Fish ^

You think that's pretty clever, don't you boy?

I really don’t care how uncool or physics-student-locked-in-his-bedroom-all-alone cliché Radiohead are, I freaking love them.



High & Dry, All I Need and No Surprises are my top 3 songs for shocking flashbacks and nostalgia through my skull when I least expect it, those chords literally pull on your heartstrings. Clever-clever, amazing wonderful Thom Yorke.



There’s something decidedly Creepy about a bunch of starched white shirted kids, stock still, angelically crooning

“A heart that's full up like a landfill,
a job that slowly kills you,
bruises that won't heal.
You look so tired-unhappy,
bring down the government,
they don't, they don't speak for us.
I'll take a quiet life,
a handshake of carbon monoxide”

Because it’s unlikely that they have a clue about what the words they are singing, what they have no doubt practised for weeks, really mean.

Radiohead can be an antidote for that modern apathy at life, but good Lord sometimes it can be the wrong idea to wallow in this vein.



I think of the first time I head Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon: an album heard since childhood, it finally hooked me, and in a candlelit room these lyrics scared the shit out of me:

All that you touch
All that you see
All that you taste
All you feel.
All that you love
All that you hate
All you distrust
All you save.
All that you give
All that you deal
All that you buy,
beg, borrow or steal.
All you create
All you destroy
All that you do
All that you say.
All that you eat
And everyone you meet
All that you slight
And everyone you fight.
All that is now
All that is gone
All that's to come
and everything under the sun is in tune
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon.





Kudos to Stella from the Off The Wall tribute band for fighting off heckles from various middle aged losers to belt out a gorgeous rendition of Great Gig in the Sky, bring a tear to my Dad’s eye.

http://www.go2offthewall.com/

Gustav Metzger/Jenny Saville being violent in general.

"And now men fly to the stars.

And men paint flying to the stars.

At this moment in London millions of men millions of objects millions of machines.

Millions of interactions each fraction of a second between men objects and machines."

Knuuuuuuuuuuuuut, Knuuuuuuuuuuut

buuuuuuurrrrrrrn !

Slagsmålsklubben

The happiest Swedish synthpop ever.



Antidote to life <3

Gin. And camels walking free drinking honey tea...

"Mothers' Ruin"
or as Snoop put's it, best with "juice".



I can honestly say after the past weekend it may well be my ruin as well, what else could induce impassioned renditions of Ricky bloody Martin and general hysterical happiness?
This is my downfall, last weekend should have been filled with studious hours of art history study akin to those of my A level years, but no, I was spending every penny of my tips on crazy good, diaphanous, magical Gin.

The construction for this mad complex essay is complete, but there's a good 20 or so hours of reading to do before even setting sail with the thing.

These are the crazy good pieces I'm going to study down to the last detail:


Gustav Metzger's acid action painting, 1961 [also looking at Flailing Trees, 2009]


Cecily Brown – Teenage Wildlife, 2003


Caravaggio - Judith Beheading Holofernes, 1598-9


However, I could still crack out an epic poem on my love for the Gin...

Kudos to everyone who remembered the lyrics to Nikki FM in the Lowther!

Currently listening to Converge, Sikth, Belle & Sebastian, Rolo Tomassi, Slagsmalklubben & The Kinks.
Mad dice mate :)