Tag Archives: Art

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hopefully he’ll never be known for Potter

Sorry, Wand Goon Squad, you can’t have him.  He doesn’t belong to you.  Any more than Alec Guinness belonged to Star Wars.  Because both men were cut from the same mold, and it showed in the way they lived, and in their best roles.

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But sorry, Potter was not one of his best roles, and it’s not how he should be remembered.  I’ve never read the books, so maybe Snape is more of a relevant presence in there.  But in the movies (which I was forced to watch) Rickman‘s talents are devalued on a character who’s about as critical as a coat stand.  Even Snape’s death scene in the last film feels like it’s completely wasting Rickman‘s immense talents, like they’re just going through the motions.

snape

Don’t get me wrong, the Potter films aren’t completely horrible, they’re fairly decent.  There are some really, really powerful scenes in there.  But claiming Rickman’s life over them isn’t right.  Guinness didn’t want Star Wars that way either.

So where do we place Alan?  Best villain of all time?  Yeah, maybe that’s a start.  To me, the best villain of all time knife fight might be between Hans Gruber and the Sheriff of Nottingham.  Who would win?  Us, by watching it.

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Just drink in this deleted scene longer clip from the Robin Hood extended edition.

This was the film era where a villain was fun, sharp, cool, even bordering on campy.  But you knew they meant business.  They also had motivations behind their actions.  Both Gruber and the Sheriff’s purpose make sense as Rickman skillfully reveals their character.  Whereas nowadays most villains are just stark-raving-mad-brutal-psychopaths.

And yet, I think Rickman wouldn’t want to be known for these either.  He was always afraid of being typecast and having these two lovely roles ruin his range and reputation.  He did theater, did it superbly, but also painted and was in general (as most like him) a true artist.

But more than anything he was just fun, fun to watch, fun to listen to, fun to see.  And you can tell whether he’s poking at himself in Galaxy Quest or acting in the oh so weird but delightful Alan Rickman Tea Time, that he’s having fun too.

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the gifts that keep on giving

Did your Christmas gifts backfire? Did you accidentally give a dog toy to a person who owns a caterpillar? Did you give a copy of Kant’s The Critique of Pure Reason only to have the person tell you they got another copy earlier that morning? Or perhaps you forgot Christmas entirely because our culture inhibits you from thinking more than 18 minutes ahead, and so you showed up empty handed?

 

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Santa’s certain you were naughty. No more Christmas for you. Come back one year.

 

Well great news, folks! You still have a chance to make up for it. Give the one re-gift that only the planet’s greatest lunatics would buy: Vladimir Putin’s cologne!

For the low, low price of $85 you too can ensure your man exudes the fragrance of “pine and fir cones” on their way to the top as “Leaders Number One”. Bask in the glory, and manly rustic scent, that will inspire the lucky recipient of your choice that they too can become one of history’s greatest monsters.

But why stop there? Odds are you likely screwed up more than one gift. So don’t forget to load up on Uncle’s Joe’s Leader One Number winter coats! You don’t think this unseasonably warm winter’s going to last forever, do you? Buy now so that when January exiles you to Siberia you’ll be ready for the bone chilling experience that awaits!

 

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“You simply can’t beat the comfort and style that comes from my ever-present presents!”

 

Oh my, all these kooky dictators are so awesome.   They’re the gifts that keep on giving. They provide amusement, you get to learn about history, and it’s just awfully validating to your own existence on your journey to a bleached skeleton status.

Think you’re doing badly in life today? Great news! Although you may have been rude to your co-workers, or cut somebody off in traffic, at least you didn’t rob one of the world’s poorest countries of $15B, or liquidate 50 million people, or produce some of the planet’s shittiest art.

So it’s a virtual guarantee that there’s hope for you. You just have to make up for your Christmas failures. So don’t forget to get in on the high-horsepower action of Timur’s New Model Vacuum. You too can erase dust and banish it to the next life! Just ask the Great Khan himself:

 

timur

“I fully endorse this product and/or service.”

 

Shop now while you still can!

Seriously, you seriously have to buy things. If you don’t, they’ve all said they’ll consider this post a failure. Do you have any idea what terrible things these crazies will do to me? They said they’ll load me down with all the unsold cases of Leaders Number One! My place really, really isn’t that big.

 

leaders number one

“Leaders Number One. For the number one Leader. In You.”

…

“Uh, Mister President, could we, could we perhaps just spice up that motto a little?”

…

“No.”

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Chicago – again & again & again & a t-rex

All your carefully laid life plans are worthless.  The universe is driving, you’re just in the backseat.  Sometimes you’re screaming, other times you’re back there giggling.  It’s all good.  As long as somebody decent like Santa Claus is driving, and not some type of coked-out-Aztec-death-god, you’re probably doing okay.

Last year I got it in my head to travel to Chicago for the first time in some sort of joyful ride to stave of mental insanity.  It was a highly successful journey.  And I wondered when I’d be back in Chicago.  I figured many, many years.

No, one year.  For work decided my new travel location would shift from Texas to Chicago.  So whereas a trip to Chicago was so very, very unique, now I’ll be there all the time.

This is of course a very good thing, I hope.  Hopefully work doesn’t detonate my view of the cooler things in life I experienced there.  But I did try and start things off on the right foot.

I got to Chicago a day early, before work, to avoid any difficulties in getting there on time for the first day.  So I took that early day and went back downtown.  I visited some of the restaurants I went to the last time, because I’m a big loser and wasn’t willing to risk a new place just yet.

But the one difference was I went to the Field Museum.  They have a ton of stuff there, most of it great, and I might write about some of the exhibits later.  They also have a t-rex.  They named it Sue after the lady who found it.

Sue

It’s the largest, best preserved t-rex bone pile on the planet.  The Field Museum paid nearly $8M to take it off the hands of the dude who’s land Sue found it on.  When you read about the legal drama that unfolded to bring this skeleton to Chicago, it’s enough to make you yearn for the scene in Jurassic Park where the lawyer gets eaten whilst he was seated upon the can.

This was the only photo I took at Field, but the shot doesn’t do it justice.  It’s a huge creature, but yet at the time I still remarked to my lunatic brain, “Wow, I thought it’d be bigger.”  I truly did.  So this of course does further confirm that I’m an idiot, as this is a seven-ton monster.

An interesting note is that’s not Sue’s actual skull.  The real skull is on the second floor in a glass box.  It’s simply too heavy to put on the actual skeleton without running a pole to the chin, which was probably a wise aesthetic choice.  They figure Sue was about 28 years old when he or she checked out to Dino Valhalla in a dry stream bed, bound for history.

It would have been quite the view if you could actually see one of these dino dudes for real.  So I have this idea, to bring the dinosaurs to life.  We’d probably need to clone them or something.  So I figure we can get their DNA from some Dominican amber.  We grab the dino DNA from the blood inside the mosquito inside the amber.  Then we get some geneticists to do their thing.  And when I have their results, I use their complex data to build a big robot dinosaur.  What am I supposed to do, breed a live one?  Do you have any idea how high that food bill would be?  Sue would eat, like, four or five cows a day, probably?  And think of how much beer Sue would drink, and I’d have to buy it, because I can’t say no to a seven ton monster.  Who’s got the cash for all that?  Not me.

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were it not for Duracell; Obi-Wan would have slain Vader

Somebody who’s actually seen the newest Hunger Games or has read the books is going to have to tell me if they have Dodge cars and trucks in there. As in, do the stormtrooper-based Hunger Games goons drive around in Dodge trucks? Or does Jennifer Lawrence lead her militant-teenage-love-army into battle in a Dodge Challenger? I ask this most important of questions because I saw this ad where they show various Hunger Games trailer shots alongside Dodge cars.

If I had to guess, I’d say that Dodge isn’t in there. So then why exactly does Dodge desire to be associated with a story that has among other things genocide, starvation, murder, and other lightweight topics that typically encourage people to go joyfully buy cars?

I don’t know what they call these things? Joint ads? Dual commercials? Future obliterated Earth tutorial?

The first one of these I saw was in 2009 when all of a sudden they shoehorned in an ad for Avatar interspersed with clips of the World Series. Joe Buck got tasked to narrate the thing. It literally broke my brain. I was like, “Eh, is there a baseball league on this mysterious alien world? Did Joe Buck misplace his brain medicine? Should I stop drinking now?” The commercial was almost entirely over before I figured out it was a deliberate dual ad.

So this is the way it’s supposed to work, I guess:

1) You like The Hunger Games

2) You see an ad of The Hunger Games alongside Dodge

3) So you like Dodge now

4) You go get your $

5) You use $ to go buy a Dodge vehicle

Or, simply replace the words Dodge and The Hunger Games to have the opposite reaction.

This is the most basic and simplistic advertising campaign imaginable. It basically devalues the audience (you) into nothing more than a partial-corporeal-ape-like-creature. How did this juvenile campaign work in 2009 and Avatar? Well, the success of that simplistic ad helped equal $2.79B. So I guess it works? I think?

So now it’s all over the place. They’re doing it for Star Wars too! Gaze upon this disgrace to humanity, only this time it’s Fiat.

I have it in my mind that they need to go back in time to 1977 and redo all the trailers for the original.

They can show Obi-Wan and Vader dueling, and Obi-Wan’s kicking Vader’s ass. Vader’s lightsaber keeps malfunctioning, and Obi-Wan’s just toying with him. Instead of finishing him off, Obi-Wan keeps kicking Vader in the shins and smacking him in the face, laughing. But then Vader has an ah-ha moment, whips out some Duracell batteries, puts them into his lightsaber while epic music plays, Vader viciously slays Obi-Wan, and then looks directly at the camera with Obi-Wan’s mangled corpse behind him: “The Force is no match for the power of the Copper Top!”

But of course this didn’t happen, for Star Wars 1977 was before the time where everybody was a sell out. A simple, glorious time when movies were still pure. And so you see, and, oh, oh no, please no.

vader

“You don’t know the true power of The Dark Side, only Duracell does.”

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Kiyomizu-dera, Kyoto, and that one great shot

If you want to discover what really matters to a cubicle goon of the modern era, gaze kindly upon whatever framed pictures they possess inside their hovels.  This impact is magnified where I work, for we have no windows.  It could be 70, sunny, with a bird, squirrel, and komodo dragon frolicking playfully together outside in the grass.  But inside for us, it’s the same stale air, harsh light, and incessant office sounds.

A lot of people put pictures of their family there.  I’m a weirdo who lives alone with his dogs, but I suppose I could put pictures of them in there, or of my Parents, Brothers, and Sisters.  But I guess I’m too much of a closed book for that kind of public display.  So instead I’ve got two pictures in there, the first a few folks may have seen me post a while back, which is essentially my Parents’ backyard.

The second photo is of Kiyomizu-dera.

 

Kiyomizu-dera2

 

I breathe every part of this photo: the forest, the winter haze, the isolation, the distant pagoda (Koyasu Pagoda).  This is Kyoto in February.  This is Japan.

The dirty little secret of this shot is that to my left, right, and behind me is a sea of humanity.  My Parents had come out to visit me for my birthday that year.  And I took them to Kyoto and Nara, because it had to be done.  I haven’t gotten into it at all on this blog, but I lived in Japan for three years.  I guess it’s just too close to the heart to write about much, or something strange like that.

Anyways, I’d been to Kyoto before and so we visited some of my favorites, but Kiyomizu-dera was new for all three of us.  We’d visited Chion-in that morning, for that was the one place in all of Japan I wanted to show my Dad (more on that later, eh, maybe).  Then we cabbed it south to Kiyomizu-dera probably after just randomly picking it off a map.  The place was mobbed, almost subway style.

 

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Looking back west toward Kyoto

 

Started in 778, the main temple buildings date from the early Edo period, about 1630.  Elaborate temples and a return to emphasis on traditional Japanese religion were among the Shogunate’s many methods to get out of the business of perpetual civil war.  It’s awfully hard to be in the sword killing trade when Shogun needs that seven year temple building project completed in three years.  And you don’t want to disappoint Shogun, do you?

Translated as “Pure Water Temple” it sits atop of mountain waterfall that you can still drink from in various attempts to cheat the Gods / Nature out of the path they’ve set for you.  What do those dudes know anyways?  All they do is make all the rules of the universe.  And rules are meant to be broken, right?  [shakes fist at sky]

My memory is truly horrible (photographs help save me), so I’m not sure where we went next.  But given the time of day, we probably went back downtown for dinner.  Which knowing Kyoto, it was undoubtedly unspeakably awesome.

 

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Kiyomizu-dera Main Hall; this was taken after the crowds had begun to thin out

 

 

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looking east up the mountain you really get a good idea of how perched the temple is upon the heights

 

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looking up from the base of the Main Hail through the branches of a random unrelated species of Japanese tree; these pillars stand as is despite the fact that they didn’t use a single nail in the construction

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I know what’s in Tut’s new tomb rooms

I don’t know what’s in Tut’s new tomb rooms.  Nobody does.  But hey, you never know where life’s going to take you.  There are all kinds of things that could be in there, including nothing.  So why not gamble away recklessly in the hopes we can guess it right?  After all, my Guests possess the most unbridled surveillance resources imaginable, so certainly I can figure this out.  Except that they’re usually too drunk to use them; and I also happen to be an idiot.

– Tut’s genuine Mommy in Nefertiti is in there and it’s the archeological discovery of the century

– Tut’s new tomb rooms don’t exist

– Tut’s 2011 Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen TDI with the 2.0L 4-cylinder diesel is parked in there pending investigations by the Egyptian Ministry of Transportation

– They break it open but instead of Nefertiti or Tut, it’s just Khufu sitting there in a lawn chair downing a highball glass of barley wine, and he’s like, “Fools!  I’ve stolen all of Nefertiti’s treasure and added to my stash.  You were only four-thousand years behind the power curve.  You’re fucked!  Ahahahahahahahaha!”  And then he re-ascends to Valhalla in the blink of an eye; and all they get is the lawn chair

– Tut added six-thousand amphora filled with booze in there to ensure he could get ripped in the afterlife with abandon; but then he ran out in 1134 AD and he’s been sad ever since.  The archeologists could try adding more booze filled amphorae to the stash to hook Tut up, but I don’t think it works that way

– They find completely empty rooms because they buried Tut in a hurry, after the murder and all

– Zahi Hawass shows up wielding a pair of old Yugoslavian machine pistols and holds everybody hostage, shouting at the top of his lungs to the Geraldo cameras, “Sign up for my newsletter to be first to here about my upcoming lectures and books!”  Poor, poor Zahi, dude you supported the wrong dictator, you should try and get in good with Sisi to get back in the game; you were a hoot to watch

king tut

give up your secrets ya bastard

 

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I require the services of The Doctor and Seth Bullock to anger Hitler’s ghost

So this will take a moment or two to explain. I wish I could blame this forthcoming lunacy on alcohol, but it’s the middle of a weekday and so sadly I have no reasonable excuse to justify my insanity. So first off, the source of today’s rank confusion with humanity is this weird article from the BBC about how morons are still buying Hitler’s art:

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-33222486

I especially like how the BBC wraps their article with this one liner about Hitler:

“He went on to become Germany’s military and political leader from 1933 to 1945, launching World War Two and causing the deaths of millions.”

For some reason they wrote this line in a non-dominant, weak voice; like Hitler was just some disgruntled toll booth operator who spray painted his bosses’ car.

How about this instead, BBC:

“He went on to brutally acquire the title of Germany’s military and political dictator from 1933 to 1945, attempted to conquer Europe and committed cultural, physical, and emotional genocide against tens of millions. Nobody misses him.”

Oh man, there’s so much else wrong with this:

1) They held the auction in Nuremberg; maybe they could have bothered to not hold a Nazi themed auction in the city where they all got put on trial for crimes against humanity

2) There are apparently people willing to pay six-figures for Hitler’s art

Why?

Is it:

a) An attempt by freaks to study the art in order to establish some kind of window into the mind of a monster?

or

b) Some freak just really wants to show off a piece of art painted by one of history’s great monsters?

We’ve already covered (a) on this blog previously:

https://arcturusproject.com/2015/03/31/how-about-hes-just-an-evil-dude/

And if it’s (b), then there are some really, really sick people out there. I could probably get $1.5M just by fraudulently claiming I had possession of Genghis Khan’s chamber pot.

If you’re foolish enough to read this blog on a regular basis; you’ll already know my broad position on free speech. But I’ll make humanity a deal, if you murder north of 10 million people, you get your free speech rights revoked.

In the first season of Justified, there’s a neat little subplot where Robert Picardo plays an art dealer who buys Hitler paintings and then destroys them. Says The Doctor to Seth Bullock, “So I buy Hitler’s shitty paintings — and I burn them.”

picardo

And so I wish I could acquire the cash necessary to outbid these idiots in the BBC article. I overbid them by one dollar each, just to mess with their sick heads. I get Hitler’s paintings, Olyphant stands next to me armed with both a Glock and a Colt to keep away the haters, and Picardo breaks out a bottle of bourbon.

We douse Hitler’s shit in bourbon, set it alight in front of everybody, and then we three take a swig of bourbon. Then we give Hitler’s ghost the finger. Then we carry on with our daily lives.

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Oh, Hitler dude, we’re just so very sorry for what’s happened to you in your past. If only somebody had liked your paintings, maybe you wouldn’t have tried to liquidate the human race. That must be the reason you did all those horrible things. Poor Hitler.

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what if velociraptor fought terminator?

There’s very little I wouldn’t give up to see this vicious bout. What purpose would it serve? I don’t care. Why should you? It’d be senseless and fun. That’s good enough for me. I assure you, you’ll pay money to see it. Plus, for one thing it’d make a movie ten times better than the mess that’s about to appear on screen.

For I have seen into the future. My Guests facilitated my journey into the outer reaches of the cosmos where I had the opportunity to see through time, grab a beer, solve the unified field theory, speak with Hitler, and watch both Jurassic Actual Park and Terminator Misspelled Word.

In order to increase the hi-larity, Hitler insisted that we use the powers of the sixth dimension to summon the corporeal form of Richard Attenborough. We also used these powers to procure enough alcohol to overcome even the level of suffering that Steven Spielberg and James Cameron are likely to endure once they realize what these people did with two of their finest creations.

Of course, this is to assume Spielberg and Cameron actually bother to watch these movies. Which of course they won’t. Instead, we’ll get the glory of two hack directors who’ve never made a decent movie but do their best to prove just how much they’re exactly like Michael Bay. Because that’s where the money is.

About halfway through World, Richard started to chug uncontrollably from a bottle of gin and then blacked out mumbling, “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it.” A third of the way through Genesis (sic) Hitler remarked that the only thing worse than this film experience was when he watched Downfall and realized what a total asshole he actually was.

And now having seen both of these movies, I have thus proven my original two conclusions correct:

1) Both these movies are horrible

2) Each of these movies will make $1B minimum

Kindly observe the awfulness on display before you’ve even watched five minutes of these putrid creations known as their trailers:

Terminator Minor Sins:

a) Arnold fighting his younger self; one liner to young Arnold: “Don’t run for office you dirty fuck! Don’t do it! I know your fate!”

b) A flying yellow school bus action scene that puts the Los Angeles river motorcycle chase scene from Terminator 2 on par with the chariot race from Ben Hur (by the way, replace the word Terminator or Jurassic with Ben Hur; and you’ll also receive a perfectly accurate film review of the forthcoming Ben Hur remake)

c) Arnold flying through a functioning death saw known as an airborne helicopter; a situation that would completely destroy the character from Terminator 2 known as The Terminator

Terminator Heinous Sins of One’s Soul:

A) Turning John Connor’s character into a half-man / half-machine psycho

Jurassic Minor Sins:

a) genetically engineered super dinosaur that will make all humanity wonder why this movie isn’t called Godzilla 19

b) a body count higher in the trailer alone than all three previous movies combined thus proving the intent to make slasher porn rather than an actual movie

c) implication of a cinematic tone so devoid of adventure and excitement as to make one wonder if the desire was to make the audience depart the theater exhausted and convinced life is just a big meat grinder

Jurassic Heinous Sins of One’s Soul:

A) brain control of the velociraptors to the point they become either mind slaves or allies of Chris Pratt

Jurassic Park is in my top five of great movies. Terminator 2 is likely in my top ten. If you think I’m a lunatic for these assessments, then you’ve read too much of this blog post to begin with. But even if you disagree with my rankings, you cannot dispute that these two movies were at least, movies.

I’m not sure what Terminator 5 and Jurassic 4 are? But they’re not movies in the sense that I understand the term. At best they’re like loud theme park rides. Which I think is the new concept for the summer blockbuster.

Take a name the populace will recognize, make it a Bay style action movie, and shove it down everybody’s throats whether they like it or not. And when you make $1B? Nobody will care.

Well I care dammit! I care a great deal. Because I have no life, and my Guests won’t leave me alone. So I’m always out to distract myself. Such as with the advertising and marketing campaign for my new sixth dimension creation where the velociraptor and terminator will participate in a Dual of the Fates at Madison Square Garden on July 25th at 8pm. Live. Pay Per View! $100.

You will pay. I assure you. I bought Chris Pratt for one afternoon to use his sexy mind control powers on millions. I can’t lose. I’ll make $1B for sure!

dual of the fates

Clever Girl over Cyberdyne in seven rounds

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the birds are not aware that life is a big meat grinder

When I was a kid, I was really into bird watching.  Don’t ask me why.  What?  Oh, what’s that?  Oh, well, you see, bird watching is not an app.  It’s where you look at birds, determine which one you’re looking at, and then observe their behavior to learn about nature.  Nobody does this anymore because it takes more than twelve seconds of time in front of a smartphone.

Anyways, one of the only things that’ll literally stop me in my tracks is a beautiful bird in a tree.  It’s one of the few times in life I truly, truly, without apprehension, feel alive.  Don’t ask me why.  It just does.  I like to stand and/or sit there for a long time like a creepy lunatic looking at a brick wall.  Only I’m looking at the birds in a tree.

I guess it’s because the birds are not aware that life is a big meat grinder.  They just do their thing.  It’s kind of like when my oldest dog (she’s now 14) was sitting in front of my Dad and she was absently looking him in the eyes and wagging her tail rapidly.  For no reason at all.  She was just happy.  And my Dad said something along the lines of:  “Oh, if only humans could be like the dogs and unaware, and just let go”.

Now, first off, my Dad’s not some freak philosopher.  He’s just working man average dude that wore the same sneakers for like two decades.  Which is one of the reasons I so remember this offhand comment from him.  Usually we talk about football or the weather.  So I guess it’s that my dogs lives inside a mindset unaware that life is a big meat grinder.  I think it’s the same thing that draws me to birds.

The birds give me hope that, in fact, life is not a big meat grinder.  Same with my dogs.  And my Dad.

Anyways, so if you want to know what my freak unhinged deranged brain considers “Pure Beauty”?  Well, head on over to Tokyobling’s Blog and see what he’s just posted about birds and trees.  It’s pure deliciousness.  I have a connection to Japan I’ve not really discussed on this blog, yet.  But Japan or not, this guy gets it.  It’s just too good.

https://tokyobling.wordpress.com/2015/04/02/the-mejiro-and-the-sakura/