Mrs. Gideon's Spontaneous Amnesia of Howard Moon

Here, Vince, ever the best friend, uses a cue card in lieu of Mrs. Gideon's nonexistent memory.

One of the running jokes in Series 1 of The Mighty Boosh involves Mrs. Gideon, Snake Keeper at the Zooniverse where Howard Moon and Vince Noir are also employed as zookeepers. Howard pines for Mrs. Gideon, but this affection is unrequited. Even worse, Mrs. Gideon can never seem to remember Howard: not his name, his face or the fact that they have had to be reintroduced every time they meet, much to Howard's distress.

Vince turns to the Camera as Ghost Howard stares on in a monkey suit (not a tux)

The only way I have been able to survive database maintenance this week has been to watch Disc 1 Series 1 of the hilarious The Mighty Boosh (2004).  Unfortunately, it is too good a distraction, and I end up watching it instead of updating fields, like any sane person.  The British get away with so much in their comedies, which end up being a weird mix of high and low humor.  Suspension of disbelief is par for the course.  It's like looking directly into the imagination of a precocious, snarky, impressively literate teenage boy with a proclivity towards musical numbers, mod culture, the strangest and most creative insults ever with occasional witty repartee, and touching moments of real emotion thrown in here and there.

Dailies: Community: In Progress

Seconds after Abed's "Don Draper, from Mad Men" impersonation. ("I liked it!"–Annie) 
 graphite on watercolor paper

Dailies: On Memory: Abre Los Ojos

Shawn Kelly circa 1992. graphite on watercolor paper

So I have exactly one photograph of Shawn Kelly circa 1992, a polaroid that I took,  from when we were both students at Pensacola Junior College and he dropped in to visit me in the Halftones to Jubilee office where I was student editor. He was about to transfer to the Atlanta College of Art; I was on my way to MICA.   His eyes are closed in the photograph, and you don't really know what somebody looks like until he opens his eyes.  I approximated, and if memory serves me right, this is a pretty good representation.

Dailies: Blink: LarrySallyDiptych

I have a few more stills from Blink that I want to resolve.

 

Larry_Sally diptych. graphite on watercolor paper.

                                                                        

Dailies: Blink 6

 

In Progress: Holding Hands and The Doctor's Elbow. graphite on watercolor paper

Dailies: Liminal Spaces: Agent Cooper and Donna Heyward

2010. Graphite on watercolor paper (moleskine journal)

I am fascinated with layers of memory, the overlap of action, and inspired by the lag/delay in a television picture, where if you take a photograph of the screen, you can catch the shift as it happens (here, in the Twin Peaks pilot).

On Memory: Hampden Court, Lakeview East

July 27

July 14

In Progress: On memory and finding the apartment building I lived in during my last 6 months in Chicago 2002. graphite on watercolor paper

Dailies: Blink 5

More conferring between Sally and Larry, while the coast is clear (for the moment).

Dailies: Blink 4

After handing her dossier on The Weeping Angels to the Doctor (for use when he gets stuck in 1969), Sally sees Larry in new light.

Dailies: Blink 3

Larry and Sally try to match the transcript to the DVD Easter Egg of the Doctor's one-sided conversation.

Dailies: Blink 2

Here, Sally Sparrow filches back the key to the Tardis (though at the time she doesn't know what it opens), stolen by the Weeping Angels.

Dailies: Nora and Koi

Today, I met up with my friend Colleen and her daughter Nora at Seneca Park and Water Tower Place in Chicago. I worked on the drawing over lunch. Then I went to the Museum of Contemporary Art to see the Calder show, where I also glimpsed the Koi in the pond on the ground floor. Nora's gaze and the empty spaces in the composition overlapped with the fish, and it made perfect sense on the page together.

Dailies: Party Down

Ken Marino (Ron) and Adam Scott (Henry), Scene from Rob Thomas' insanely funny (and recently cancelled) series Party Down, about a hapless catering company staffed by aspiring and/or failed actors and future soup restaurant franchise owners.

Dailies: Blink

My friend and fellow MICA alum Alex D was telling me about his installation of gnomes in the upcoming Baltimore Artscape.  Gnomes are sort of cheesy/cute, but he was hoping to make them creepy/er. This reminded me of how I'm convinced those classical plaster casts in the Main Building Court move around at night when nobody's looking, which reminded me of the Dr. Who episode "Blink". I mentioned this to Alex, who had never heard of Dr. Who, much less this episode (my favorite), in which requisitely creepy statues called The Weeping Angels steal people's lives, feeding on lost time, and try to wreak this havoc on heroes Sally Sparrow and Larry Nightingale. The catch: The Weeping Angels can't move, as long as someone is looking at them, but if and when you blink, then...

Dailies: Ray Bradbury: "Banshee"

Ray Bradbury was my favorite writer when I was a kid, and a recent conversation with Michelle LaPerriere reminded me of this.  At the MICA library I checked out a copy of Bradbury Stories, a collection of 100 selected tales, of which "Banshee" is one of the best and most satisfying. 

Bradbury is a master at the art of description and imagery, and while the film version (created for the 1980s HBO series Ray Bradbury Theater, which hasn't aged very well, I'm afraid) gets some of the details right, there were other things I would have changed. The Banshee is the best thing about the film, but even she could have been made more ethereal and otherworldly.  Peter O'Toole is the playboy movie director, and the object of the Banshee's affection/loathing; In my version,  thought it would be interesting to "cast" a younger version of O'Toole as Doug (many of Bradbury's stories have a hero named Douglas) the screenwriter protagonist whom the director cruelly insults and teases and then dares to go out into the woods to meet the woman with a "face of snow...dressed in a long, moon-colored dress...nothing in the world would ever frighten her again." I think my favorite elements are the wisp of the Banshee's shawl on the left and the trapezoid of orange light from the house on Doug's face.

Dailies: MOVIES: Inside the Closet of Board Games: The Royal Tenenbaums

It's like a mini-museum of Board Games from the 70s on, and the perfect place for a confrontation.

Dailies: MOVIES: Inside the Closet of Board Games 2: The Javelina

 

Q: Pagoda, Where's my Javelina?

A: Here you are.