mystic milk

I'm telling myself I'm wrong in the comments too.

2009-11-04T13:41:00.000-08:00

I haven't seen the TV show MAD MEN for the sole reason that I'm pretty sure it would make me want to kill myself. I've heard people talk about it though. And I've seen animated .gifs of the characters in livejournal avatars. With this knowledge, I can pretend to know why it's so popular; the most beloved form of entertainment right now is marketing.

I'm not saying people like it because it's actually about marketing. I think viewers realize MAD MEN isn't so much a show about ad executives as it is a show about selling a retro style of 'cool', nice clothes and the idea that cable makes classier entertainment than network television. That's why people like it, not because they want those things advertised to them, but because the show makes very obvious what it's trying to sell. All media is 'secretly' trying to sell you something, and by putting it not so much under the surface as just further away on the surface, MAD MEN is making viewers feel like they figured it out. It's real subliminal advertising is that it's making you feel smarter for watching it.

That's what's cool now, I think, having knowledge about marketing, figuring out why and how things are being sold to you. And it's been cool for a while. Most blogs or forums about movies are more likely to talk about how GI JOE was marketed than the actual (terrible) film. I think this, rather than decreasing attention spans, are why trailers are seemingly more popular than the films they're advertising. People into BATMAN don't so much talk about what he's up to, or how he's drawn than how he's being sold to the comic readers or how he could be sold to not comic readers. I realize this isn't new as it's been going on since the 60s, or since I've been on the Internet at least, but I think it's popularity has entered the mainstream, and there was a slight change in the discussion about it and how it's treated a couple of years ago.

I was raised by HE MAN. A show created to sell me action figures. I had no problem with this. I was also an impressionable 12 year old when grunge music happened. Remember 1991? Kurt Cobain said Rolling Stone was a corporate magazine, the music industry was fake, patriarchal society is just trying to sell us pre packaged fear and rebellion. He might as well of said 'Fuck He-Man.' But He-Man was my father, and no matter how much adolescent rage I'm going to throw at him, somewhere there is love.

College music and the college attitude became cool. Gen X, like their hippy parents before them, started to slightly rebel against marketing culture. Then, also like their parents before them, they got jobs, and had to start marketing themselves and their companies. And companies started having to advertise to them. There was a certain guilt embedded into Gen X advertising that carried over into companies and people advertising on the web. A friendly, sort of, 'this is an ad, we're sorry for trying to pull one over on you, but please buy our shit.' People used to apologize for having to register or have ads on their blogs. They felt sorry, or at least, knew you knew you were being marketed to and didn't want you to object. They also wanted you to feel like you were part of a group of people reclaiming the marketing machine. He-Man still wants you to buy his toys, but he's sorry he tried to trick you.

And, of course, it being Gen X, there was heavy use of irony. Indie music blogs started talking about, or singing the merits of Billy Joel or Britney Spears. Ads were all 'wink, wink, buy.' But it was cool, because they were kind of kidding. But they also kind of weren't. And now they totally aren't.

People a few years younger than me were raised by Pokemon. A show created to sell video games. They were impressionable 12 year olds when rappers and boy bands were the most popular music acts. Both rappers and pop groups have no qualms about advertising. You know what record label a rapper is on, or when his new album is coming out because he says it in his songs. These kids also grew up on not only ironic advertising, but web advertising, like Google, and Amazon, that is more personalized, but also much more obvious. They know everything is an ad, and I don't think they don't give a shit.

A lot of blogs have ads, and most blogs are almost attempting to sell the blogger as a product. A lot of people have Twitter accounts selling themselves (sometimes, it seems, for no reason). Most vlogs I see on Youtube essentially beg for comments, or star ratings. Corporate run websites or magazines, like Vice or Paste or Flickr, don't really hide the fact that they're owned by a corporation. They don't care, and don't expect you to.

You can listen to Billy Joel or Britney Spears or Madonna unironically.

The difference between the sons and daughters of He-Man and She-Ra and the children of Pokemon (besides one group's likelihood to be sexually attracted to furry cartoon monsters) is that marketing is no longer hidden, or at least not hidden in the same way.
Marketing has just become something else you do, like painting, or coding, or making music. And people love to criticize it like they used to criticize painting, or coding, or music. And that criticism is one of the most popular forms of entertainment right now.

I can't believe I'm still typing, so I'm going to avoid the whole Republican VS Democrat, Apple VS PC, Xbox VS PS3, thing. Or that Kurt Cobain is a video game now (I like him more as a video game). Also I'm grossly generalizing, yo, and not saying one thing is better than the other.

I have all this stuff in mind when I'm trying to make a website for my artwork. I've had a domain for about 5 years now and I've been slowly updating it and changing things around the entire time. I want a site that's all 'hey look at my drawings, if you want', but I sort of need a site that also says 'and give me some of your money.' I don't want to come across like He-Man or Pokemon. Which is probably why I don't get jobs. Then I had a break-through the other night and came up with this:

http://ifeelawesome.net/dollars

Also, if anyone wants to pay me to attempt to write the longest set up for a joke ever, I'm your man.

Here's a song:

The Cancellation of Quasar

Here's the first 3 pages of the comic I'm working on right now, PAWS. I'm going to put it on my site to read in chunks. I've been waiting for a good stopping place for part 1. At first I was going to stop at page 5, but now I'm thinking 10. If this line of thought continues, Part 1 may encompass the entire thing.

Halloween.

2009-11-01T09:34:00.001-08:00

Old News/Self Conscious Blogging.

2009-10-02T09:39:00.000-07:00

I put the 16 page comic I made for Stanley Lieber's Fake anthology and have been posting pieces of for the past 2 months or so here if you'd like to read it.

Speaking of SL and comics; you can download, or buy his comic (on paper, or, I believe, laser disc) The Abandonment Of Cruelty here. My totally lazy review of it is: it's like Eddie Campbell drawing Valis, bro.

I originally wrote this post last week and saved it as a draft, as I am young, and busy, and run from hip social engagement to hip social engagement, hopped up on Red Bull and metatextual references. Or I had to go to my Grandmother's birthday party. For the past 7 days, I've been tweaking and slightly editing this while reminding myself that it's a blog and not something important like a thesis paper, or a groundbreaking scientific research article, or an internet video game review. This is why I normally just stop doing things at the first sign of being finished. I'd never actually consider comics or songs, or blog posts to be 'done' otherwise. I'd be the George Lucas of blogging.

I'm hoping that paragraph makes more sense, but remains equally as thrilling when I turn it into a 350 page mass market paperback called Save As Draft, Save As Death.

All that being said, I think the 12 paragraphs (no joke) I wrote about the Running Man script don't necessarily need to exist outside my head. Although making a blog post about the making of the same blog post probably doesn't either.

This is the cover to my next comic of which I've drawn one page so far. I keep going back and forth on whether to run the thing as a weekly-ish webcomic or just wait to put all of it up when it's done (I'm hoping between November/December and 2020).

Hippies.

2009-09-16T09:51:00.000-07:00

Two drawings I did a couple of weeks ago for an article about Phish fans in The Portland Mercury.

First time in a while I had a lot of fun doing an illustration for someone else. I got an email from a dude that's into Phish talking about the band today, and I had to admit that while chances are I have heard them, I can't remember it actually happening. Music, for me, just like the news, poetry, or love, doesn't exist unless it happens in a Raekwon song.

Rom N Roll.

2009-09-03T10:02:00.000-07:00

My Rom drawing for the Bill Mantlo fundraiser Spacenight that's happening at Floating World Comics in December. Here's the blog for it.

I realized a few days ago that I neglected to mention it here, but I still have a (very) few copies of my Pink Tombs comic for sale. It's $8. More info on my livejournal

I'll probably do another print run once these sell out, though that may take a while. They should, however, be available at 1, 2 or 3 comic stores soon, so I'll let you know. I'm also wondering if the comixpress webstore only looks like a pit of despair, and if it would be worth selling it through them.

I feel like this post reads as if I used a blog template to write it. 'Insert Image, Insert Description, Insert Link' Insert Life Update:

I haven't been writing on the internet too much recently as I've been feeling a little blogged out. Not so much in a 'I went on a picnic, and there's a 3-d world out there, with 3-d women and I cried, so I'm deleting my Myspace' way, more in a cranky, my new neighbors are really into this music that's a mix of traditional Latin songs with club beats, and it could be breaking my brain, and I've cut down on caffeine which is causing me to have emotions, or at least one emotion: grumpiness -way. Though, after 15 years of being protein deficient, I have discovered these things called 'protein drinks' which are making me feel almost human again. So I should be back to typing about random comics from the 1980s, and the magic of Teaneck, New Jersey in no time.

2 4 U.

2009-08-10T13:41:00.000-07:00

1

Stanley Lieber made a comic for you to read called Ensign Smurf. The first part is up on the Arthur Blog.
I was going to write about how SL is an internetional treasure, ect but then I realized that I'm tired and cranky, and you could easily read the first few pages of the comic and discover this for yourself if you haven't already. Such is the magic of comics that they contain a dense amount of information in a small space. And part of the Ensign Smurf information package is the sentence 'I'm Stanley Lieber, I'm a genius motherfucker.'

2

I made you a mix. Sometimes when I'm kind of bored or procrastinating on 'paying my bills' (writing suicide notes to credit card companies) or work or whatever, I start cutting together samples to use in my music. I however, almost never use them. Not because I'm afraid of copyright infringement as I laugh at copyright (not really but sometimes I write 'LOL' inside of copyright symbols on things), but because every time I do use a piece from someone else's song, someone points out how it's the best part, or really impressive for my music. Which in itself would be okay if it didn't lead to me slowly punching myself in the face for a few hours.

Anyway, this is bits and pieces of songs and noises and whatever. If you were to imagine being in a club that replaced dancing and drinking with napping and birdwatching it might make more sense. I'll put up a tracklist for it when I get a chance to listen to the thing again.

more slashr.

2009-08-07T10:43:00.000-07:00

two more pages from this comic. i should be done drawing it sometime between this weekend and 2011. hopefully when read at once the whole thing makes slightly more sense. committing myself to work solely on this until i finish it was, while honorable, possibly a bad idea as my personal life lies in so much ruin i can't convince anyone to go see the gi joe movie with me.

yesterday we spent 20 hours vaguely house sitting, but more specifically doing laundry and watching an endless amount of cable television. these are some things i learned:

-television now allows you to just pick a tv show/movie to watch. it's like a world where space time does not exist. or it's like watching tv on the internet without chinese subtitles at the bottom of the screen. i guess i should mention here that i haven't had cable in 10 years.

-watching too much tv may give me brain damage. i think mostly because it lacks the interactivity of the internet. 3 hours in and i was lulled into a near catatonic state that is only now beginning to lift. when i'm online, i'm usually doing 40 things at once. when i'm watching 'babylon a.d.' on tv, i have only vin diesel's living poetry to occupy my mind. i'm not saying it's bad, it just makes me feel weird and unconnected. remember that episode of 'terminator: the sarah connor chronicles' where the john henry robot gets unplugged and he won't speak or move until he is allowed back on the internet? no? i guess it's your fault the show got canceled then.

slashr.

2009-07-31T10:01:00.001-07:00

2 in sequence pages from the middle of the comic that i'm working on. hoping to finish it soon, or at least come up with some sort of 'tear guard' for my wacom tablet.

hey.

2009-07-26T08:47:00.000-07:00

still here yet find it difficult to blog in the summer due to all the time i spend sweating and feeling uncomfortable, attempting to discover humanity's true cosmic purpose and waging a holy war against mosquitoes.

i do find 10 minutes a day to tumble though.

manga jackson.

2009-07-05T10:06:00.000-07:00

i'm pretending you don't read any of my 200 other blogs while also pretending you'll read this.

2009-07-03T12:24:00.000-07:00

(first 2 pages from a comic i'm drawing for the FAKE COMICS anthology)

written in bullet points to give you the freedom your reading style desires:

- i am not dead (yet).

whenever i don't update here for a while some friends, but mostly people that i don't usually talk to start emailing and texting me asking 'what's up?' i, of course, read between the lines and assume they want to know if i am finally dead and aleks is finally single. this is again not the case. i took a couple of weeks off from drawing to get some comic scripts done. this led to playing a lot of infamous, totally forgetting how to draw (see above), and being kind of cranky. it also led to me remembering i kind of like writing and now currently write blog posts too long for anyone to read and emails with stories only tangentially related to the subject.

- tumblr.

i've been using my tumblr pretty often. i have dug the vibe (from what i've seen) of tumblr for a while. mystic milk had a long abandoned account there last year. i originally got this new one because in attempting to make my computer live i was going through and archiving a bunch of old files and found 200 short stories i had written and not posted anywhere because they were either terrible or i just didn't really know where to put them. so i figured i'd throw them on tumblr and forget about it. since i only thought of this 6 months ago and it would take like 10 minutes this didn't happen yet. i did get an iphone though so the ability to blog while i walk aimlessly around my town hoping no one wants to rob me has led to a bunch of random updates.

- gif week.

i also updated livejournal for 5 days in a haze of nostalgia. it was similar to when i saw duran duran's 'first ever reunion' show twice, 3 years apart from each other.

- not really important but you might be involved.

i've added a bunch of links to the side of this blog. there is a chance i forgot you. there is also a chance i put your name and made up your website. while it might seem socially awkward to mention either, if you want to toss off the chains of society's taboos just let me know and i'll add you/fix it. also if we don't know each other, and your websites there, i'm just a fan of yours and only slightly creepy.

- vlog.

i wasn't going to post this but whatever. vlog

- happy 4th of july.

i'll be wrapped in only an american flag eating grilled cheese all weekend in celebration.

i like in scifi when they let you know it's the future/alien planet by referring to concepts of time with made up words.

2009-06-10T12:18:00.000-07:00

i'm waiting every day for the cnn headline that reads 'too many blogs, not much to say: is this generation all typed out?'

for the first time in 200 consecutive years i didn't make it to the MOCCA fest this past weekend. i was kind of busy. saturday i ate a cupcake and sunday i had one of those oreo sundae things from baskin-robbins. judging from most of the stuff i've read about it on the internet it was hot and in a different building and this made people sad. i'm pretty sure mocca is really hot every year though my memory of the event is clogged by the fact that i mostly remember the searing sweat pouring into my eyes more than anything else.
according to fewer things i've read about it there were a lot of books that i now want and a bunch of awesome people there. unlike the highlander though, i live without regret. yet i am totally going next year.

and then you realize network tv is like 10 yrs behind the rest of pop culture and a single tear drops from your left eye.

2009-06-03T08:30:00.000-07:00

an abandoned idea for a comic strip. it was supposed to be about a cynical, sort of asshole tv writer from our time that wakes up 'reverse life on mars' style in a kind of post-apocalyptic future. he is constantly expecting some sort of dystopian/1984/almost every sci-fi movie situation to reveal itself, but everything is pretty much awesome.

i thought it'd be kind of funny, but i have since thought of things that are kind of funnier.

the characters were going to mostly be this group of guys i came up with a couple of years ago to be in another abandoned comic idea 'loveocalypse'. i wanted to do something that went against the whole apocalypse is coming/i want to fuck zombies/it doesn't matter it's the endtimes vibe that was going on in pop culture (i think it has since become an idea that is now just accepted as fact. 'yes, the zombies are coming out of the melted ice caps, i can eat as much cake as i want' type of thing). so i started to write a series of mini comics about this future city that was essentially a utopia. or, at least, a joketopia. and even though i wrote a scene where a guy has sex with an animated tree with a face, i got bored quickly.

maybe we're all humanators.

2009-05-26T07:35:00.000-07:00

with the all sorts of awesome 2nd half of the 2nd (final) season of the terminator tv show and the movie coming out last week, i don't think i've talked about anything else for the past month for longer than 30 seconds. it's getting to the point where the people around me are the human resistance and i am a lazy skynet machine firing theories about john connor's alternate time-lines bullets.

here's a new song:

the temple's all right

pink tombs series finale.

2009-05-18T06:40:00.001-07:00

the final 8 pages of my comic are up on the arthur blog.

i'll probably make another post talking about it a little more, once i actually wake up and/or convince myself of the possible illusion that people have read it, but you know the end of roseanne where you find out that much of the show was just a story roseanne was writing? i was going for not really that with a mix of those two cosby show episodes where he dreams about muppets.

i guess i should've labeled that 'roseanne spoiler' but those that know me know that i have 'roseanne spoiler' tattooed across my chest, and it's weird to overstate something like that.

not awake.

i'd actually take winter over summer 95% of the time (in a fistfight)

2009-05-17T08:23:00.000-07:00

a logo i made for aleks that i think captures much of her personality.

here's a song i recorded recently:
summer2009
after a self-imposed (the cia was only vaguely involved) exile from recording music since i finished my last album, i'm back in the game. if 'the game' is making poorly recorded pop music and not competitive break dancing as my parents always led me to believe. i've made a few songs. this is the one i actually like the least but it's also the only one that's finished. besides, it's topical. or seasonal. it actually works if you imagine me being 100% serious about it, in which case, it becomes kind of funny. also i realized the computer voice when you put a delay effect on it sounds like it's saying 'revolt'. kind of frightening, but not surprising. also 'summer 09' sounds kind of like 'summon odin'.

wwf.

2009-05-15T10:27:00.000-07:00

like most kids in the 80s, i was obsessed with pro wrestling. my interest hit its zenith and abruptly stopped at possibly the peak age for being a wrestling fan, 8 or 9 years old. in my grammar school 'yearbook' though i did list pro wrestler as my future career. i wonder what my younger self would think of me now that i have the body of a pro wrestler, but just waste it by sitting on the computer all day.

(no joke: in my 3rd grade yearbook i list 'the fall guy' as what i want to be when i grow up. sadly this didn't pan out either.)

in the wolverine sequel kitty will prob be his cousin or something.

2009-05-07T12:35:00.000-07:00

i believe the kitty pryde show that al and i are in along with 17 million other artists (at least 1 million amazing ones) is happening tonight at floating world.
full of pryde
floating world comics

i won't be there as i don't live in portland and will be busy being dressed as young, moustachioed, picard and telling people 'i'm not even born yet' at every screening of the new star trek i can get to for the next 4 days.

spring.

2009-05-04T13:03:00.001-07:00

b.

2009-04-30T08:39:00.000-07:00

bees.

2009-04-28T08:32:00.001-07:00

aleks woke up earlier today and stopped me from the beginning of my daily 20 hours of sitting motionless and wondering how i'm going to make enough money to survive next month, to let me know 'something' was in the bedroom. something that sounded like a bee. i went in to discover a bee (or wasp or hornet) that was about the size of my head. those that know me irl, know that an insect that is the size of my head is an insect that is, at the very least, 4 feet long. i ended up beating it to death with the 'songs of the 60s fakebook' (no joke) and then having to turn over the room to find it's corpse. i feel weirdly guilty about killing things, especially when they are the size of my dog. i felt weirder about it because as the bug died it said something along the lines of 'bzzzzdozzzyouzzzknowzwhatliezzzintheshadowzzzofthe
statuebuzz.'

this combined with the fact that i've been playing resistance for ps3, which heavily features alien scorpions and spiders makes me feel like i have bugs crawling all over my skin.

3 things i like on the internet today:

forming by jessie moynihan: possibly one of the best webcomics ever, as it has everything i like, space gods, aliens, prehistoric civilizations...

kevin hooyman's comic for arthur is also awesome.

and madelion's music video is all kinds of good:

the robocop 2 of my comic.

2009-04-24T08:05:00.000-07:00

next 6 pages are up on the arthur site.
they contain a musical number, civil war battles, drug use, jokes, a teepee and walk on cameos by both phoebe and biggz.

world wide web comic books.

2009-04-10T07:22:00.000-07:00

6 pages of my new comic are up on the arthur magazine site
.

more pages will follow soon-ish.

it's a comic based on the idea that the fictions we experience (books/movies/songs) and the ones we create are just as 'real' to us as our 'real life' experiences, especially when dealing with memory.
it's something i've thought a lot about since i watched masters of the universe on dvd a couple of years ago and realized that much of my remembered childhood was actually he-man's life. though i did have a cat that let me ride it around my neighborhood and i was surrounded by muscular, gay men throughout my younger years, there's not much he-man and i have in common. identity is interesting to me especially with how it's built by memory and how much that is tied up in the things we experience in our imagination as much as the things we experience physically. and i think it's even kind of weirder now, as opposed to my eternia years, as everyone blogs about their lives. we're all building a sort of public internet persona as well as our 'real' one. i'm rambling. which is why a drew a story about it, i guess.

of course you probably won't get any of that from the comic.

i'm really happy to be able to do something for arthur magazine as i actually read the mag and the website and really dig it. jason leivian is their online comics dude (as well as being involved in 600 other projects on a daily basis). and he's been posting really awesome shit there recently like farel dalrymple's pop gun war sequel and stuff by kevin hooyman and al columbia. and stanley lieber is working on a story for it that may finally reveal the sexuality of the internet.

blogging prof.

2009-04-07T08:46:00.000-07:00

like many people's grandparents during the late 20s/early 30s, the economic downturn has me going without certain things that i only recently considered necessities. and also like our grandparents, blogging is on top of that list. i do miss it.
all my time recently has been wrapped up in sort of obsessively working on one comic story (i got into that sort of weird hell dimension of re-drawing one page over and over), but in an exciting twist, i'm about to finish the 6th page and grandly reward myself with thinking about doing my laundry.
i think i forgot how to blog.

flower parachute

2009-04-02T14:17:00.000-07:00

that's how I would most likely phase if only i could.
For the Kitty Pryde show at floating world comics.

Why, I will never give up on juice pouches.

Minute Maid coolers
your secret pocket
eludes me.