MFT: Brian Cox Scotch Pronunciations

Do you remember that time when Orson Welles was so down and out that he was doing the commercials? Now it is part of the Welles' lore and fondly memefied in "The Critic" but it is rather sad period of life for The Great One. Among else it brought us stroke of genius remark "probably" and "frozen peas" meltdown. And there was also a long line of wine commercials in which are more famous for Welles going full-method wasted with every take. If only Dos Equis "The Most Interesting Man in the World" launch a couple of decades earlier... Anyway...



Sometimes big money suits try to do something that will not be blatant exploitation. This thing is one of such happy accidents. In this video you can see great Scottish actor Brian Cox pronouncing names of various types of scotch. So that you can order it adequately. That's the only thing he says throughout the entire 45-episode run. The series was produced by Esquire Magazine. Brian Cox looks a bit occupied in this series. He definitely gives negative amount of damn about the whole affair - just a job. You get that vibe and it breaks the whole thing. He's bored, apparently. Russell Jaffe would say he feels like Vader in WWF. I already have over hundred words here. Moving on next.

This series is a trifle nonce. It is a waste of Brian Cox' talent, there is no punchline to make it work. It is stretched out gag from "Kate and Leopold" where Hugh Jackman's character does a try-out for a commercial. No build-up, no pay-off. It is what it is - acclaimed actor pronouncing words. It means nothing. And that's why it is easy to spin.

Since i don't care about scotch - i perceive it as a piece of conceptual art. It is something as stupid simple as the very first video of HowToBasic where he just picked up an umbrella. You can't escape the feeling that there must be something. But there's nothing. There is glaring void behind it all. You can feel its presence. It is petrifying. Just a little bit. But it is nice thing to listen to on a shuffle. Especially if you are into doing something very pointless.

If you think about it - there many ways to make use of it. You can do a song out of it. Simple reciting of the titles. Kinda like Tom Lehrer's "The Elements". Or you can take the recording and mix them Steve Reich-like minimalist style - with looping, phasing, flanging mongolian cheek clap rampage. Or you can think about it just like that - it is better than thinking about your a) job b) family c) aspiring ambitions d)

Later Esquire did the same thing with Patrick Stewart pronouncing italian words (more like Patrick Stewart in-character as Captain Jean-Luc Picard pretending to be undercover as an actor who does educational videos) and it was nowhere near as great. Sir Patrick was really trying. It just wasn't right. That's not how you make dank feeng.

MFT: Emoji Aquarium - probably the greatest twitterbot

I have a soft spot for Emoji's because of their expressive potential. There entire undiscovered country hidden behind these symbols - waiting to be explored. In these uptight times - ideographic symbols are rarily used for creative purposes and that is a great shame. Emojis and Emoticons can tell a story like anything else. Even more - they are capable of creating narratives impossible otherwise. Imagine Warhol Screen Tests or "Ten minutes older" short - this kind of narrative. It might be overly verbose otherwise. But in Emojis it will be just right.

Emoji Aquarium is a Twitterbot that shows random generated tweets made completely of Fish-related Emojis. It was launched in February 2017. EmojiAquarium was designed by Joe Sondow. Every couple of hours bot tweet a combination of various fish and aquarium related emojis. And nothing else. No comment, no significant intent. Every tweet is just another idyllic scene from an imaginary aquarium. It is soothing and relaxing. Especially if you tend to follow the news on Twitter.

As it is EmojiAquarium is piece of generative ambient conceptual art. It is self-multiplying and completely devoid of mandatory "making sense". Scarce placement of the fishes inside the tweet reference to concrete poetry. Part of its charm lies in the fact that Twitter isn't really used for things like that. Sure, there are a lot of bots who post curious stuff. But they all pursue something - whether it is variations on the poem or gruesome medieval deaths. Emoji Aquarium does nothing. It is what it is. Cue Monty Python's Meaning of Life fish tank greek chorus.

There's also another Twitterbot by Joe Sondow that pursues similar goal - Emoji Meadow. Instead of fishes it shows some grass and flowers. Instead strategic placement of the symbols it does the opposite by covering the entire space of the tweet with symbols. Majority of it is "grass" which is mixed with various "flowers" and other "things". It is much closer to ASCII encoding of images.

Zur-En-Arrh Transmission: Breathe quietly and watch the clouds

Article with all-black illustrations: The story of Cut'n'Splash and Collected Black Panels

This is an article in which all illustrations are merely a black squares. Because it is a nice idea and i wanted to test it out. Sometimes it happens that way. Here's the story. I was looking for a gallery show to visit after work and stumbled upon an article which described an art-show designed to imitate the experience of the blind. The text was so-so but the illustration was top notch - just black squares. It was a nice touch in otherwise throwaway piece.

However this is just an excuse to talk about my long running project nobody cares about also known as Collected Black Panels. What is it? As it says on the tin - it is all about gathering black panels from various comic books and other sources. All sorts of black gathered together in the most pointless and excessively abstract collage possible. Why? Because nobody ever tried to do that (because it is mindbogglingly meaningless waste of time).

How this whole thing started? I'm a late-convert in terms of reading comic books. Sure, i've read Triple M (Miller, Moore, Morrison) "Required reading" list and some webcomics but it never really consumed me in a truly fan obsession. I also owned a copy of "ElfQuest" when i was a kid and it is still one of my favs. Then in May of 2015 i was reeling off incredibly convoluted and misguided attempt at moviemaking. Being crushed and devastated by the circumstances - i was unable to do anything for a while. And that's where comic books came to rescue. 

While pointlessly surfing on the web - i've came to some comic book related website where I've read an article about Batman's story arc "Knightfall". It was described as "Batman's having a very long, hard day which pushes him to the limit". This description really interested me. I've downloaded the story arc and started reading. It was incredible. Up to the point of Bane's "Break You" moment - i thought it was the best thing ever. It was all-killer, no-filler balls to the wall action. Then came Jean-Paul Valley Azrael-Batman and his ridiculous costume and things went south. But one thing really entertained me - Azbats facial expressions. For some reason i thought it was perfect avatar-picture fodder. And so i started to snap all the headshots of Azbats. Every each of them. I was going back and forth through the comic book looking for Azbats face. It was reinvirogating in so many ways.

Then i started to notice that some panels look very different and they can be extracted outside of their original context and reappropriated elsewhere. I started to gaze through comic books looking for a panel to step. I started hoarding them for no particular reason. Right around that time i came back to Grail Marcus' "Lipstick Traces" (my go-to book when feeling sad and lonely) and read about Lettrist antics. And i thought "Well, since i have nothing else to do - why don't try something completely different". That's how "Cut'n'Splash" was born. It was June 2015.

At first "Cut'n'Splash" was merely a place where i could drop my favorite panels from various comic books. But as time went by i realized that some panels connect with each other and construct some sort of abstract narrative. And so i started to arrange panels in a specific way in order to tell the story without even having an idea what it was. By July "Cut'n'Splash" transformed from just another "comic book stuff" to warped and twisted infinite collage comic strip that was telling something backwards. Since it is really hard to compose long narrative within Tumblr - i was consumed by making short vignettes. After a while i started to shift to more abstract-impressionist kind of story telling - something akin to kaleidoscope. 

Then reality took its tool and i was forced to move out to another city. Workload wasn't creativity-friendly and so "Cut'n'Splash" was left abandoned for a better half of 2016 (although i've composed a better half of "Eellogofusciouhipoppokunurious" around the same time). The only time in 2016 "Cut'n'Splash" was in the works was in-between two jobs in October. In November i've landed in another place which was much more relaxed and creativity-friendly. Slowly i started to get my groove back and by March 2017 i was ready to restart "Cut'n'Splash" with a new found drive. That's where "Collected Black Panels" comes in. 

Black panels were one of those things that instantly fascinated me. It is something of a rarity in comic books. Because purely black panel is a waste of space that can be used to tell a story. Within a story's context black panel can really improve the narrative by letting the reader imagine certain events. But usually it is just a blackout or signifier of passage of time. It takes a considerable skill to use it to maximum effect. My first big encounter with black panels was in one of the Frank Miller books. I guess it was "Daredevil: Love and War". There were two sequences of black panels. It was incredible. After a while i've found out that there are lots of abstract monochrome panels sometimes wordless, sometimes with some exclamations or comments. Some of them found its way to "Cut'n'Splash" (i've used black panels to punctuate transitions between episodes) but the majority were left unused.

In March i started to read "Love and Rockets". One of the things that impressed me about it was the way black panels were used. They were telling the stories on their own. It was something like David Mazzuchelli's adaptation of Paul Auster "City of Glass" (the best comic book ever, btw) - really abstract but endlessly fascinating. It left me puzzled. I had no idea what to do with it. I had several hundred of black panels of all sorts and i kept hoarding more and more of them. And then it struck me "I have a lot of black panels too!" and the very next thing i did was registering another blog aptly titled "Collected Black Panels". 

The concept is simple: to construct infinite abstract collage comic strip made completely out of monochrome panels. Sure it is a bit silly to use purely black panels - considerable part of the snaps contains onomatopoeia, exclamations, parts of the dialogue, some comments, etc. It all adds up to an imaginary narrative that don't even exist in the thing but in the reader's mind while perceiving it. Why bother doing that? Because while there are lots of examples of Black Paintings - no one ever tried to construct Black Panel collage and never really tried to simply collect black panels. 

At the time of writing this text "Collected Black Panels" contains over five hundred of monochrome panels of all forms and times from so many different comic books i doubt i'll ever be able to recall even some of the sources. 

I'm tired - Nine found zeroes

This is from Poor Old Tired Horse Magazine. And i think it is a nice illustration for my current state of mind. I really feel numb. Like hard numb.

BSPH: Blackjack - Heart of Stone

You know Michael Bolton. He's "The one who sucks". Over the years he managed to pass through numerous phases of sellout animosity to memetic hatred to ironic reinvention thanks to "Office Space" mention and Lonely Island collaborations. But he is not taken seriously. But at one point Michael Bolton was legitimately and unironically great. It happened back when he was starting in the late 70s. He was in the band called Blackjack together with future Kiss guitarist Bruce Kulick. The band lasted only two albums, failed to make any significant impact but helped to put performers on the map. In a grand scheme of things Blackjack is merely a footnote in a storied careers of all involved. And that is not fair. 

Case in point - this song.

"Heart of Stone" is a song by Blackjack released in 1979 on their eponymous debut album. Stylistically it is ordinary but stomping soft rock love song with a streak of blue-eyed soul - classic wacky-tacky AOR thingie. On a surface "Heart of Stone" tells a story about "longing" for "real" "connection" and inability to sustain it due to lack of acceptance of significance of the other part and general ego-centrism "nuisance". Something any human being can be familiar with to a certain degree. Curiously "Heart of Stone" also manages to subvert that theme in a very unexpected way.  

There is very interesting thing going on with the lyrics. Due to its traditional structure - the lyrics present very fragmented, scattered narrative. It never really gels, never comes together in anything resembling coherence. It is too boiled down. It twists and turns too much. Images are throwing itself in every direction. It is intentionally a mess that fails to make much sense. It is too manic and unfocused. The phrasing is telling - it is opaque, vague and non-specific. Lack of details condemn the protagonist as the root of the problem he talks about.  It's a neat trick.  

The arrangement of "Heart of Stone" is built around piano riff which seems to be half-finished - always ending up stumbling and constantly repeating itself. Bruce Kulick's sweeps add nice touches to the arrangement serving as swipes to the next episode which is all the same - it is almost "I have no mouth but i must scream" kind of repetition. Drummer Sandy Gennaro adds very backwards sounding drum lines to a relatively straightforward groove. It is as if the song and the drums were moving in opposite directions. It gives a lot of texture and makes every part of the song distinctive. "Heart of Stone" goes round and round and round sowing seeds of feelings with that particular sentimental flavor. By that it tells the real story of the song. "Heart of Stone" fails to progress but really wants to while not willing to do a thing. That is contrasted with Bolton's performance.

Michael Bolton sounds too big for the song. Because of that he feels helpless. His voice is confined, incarcerated into the constraints of the song - trying to break free, get away. Every time he amps the drama - it is a desperate escape attempt. He goes like that for two rounds. Dissonance between the lyrics and delivery cue to the fact that the whole thing is self-imposed and does not really matters. Then things culminate in the middle section - Bolton goes all guns blazing. He gives up, spills it all out and gets over the cause. But not before taking one final chorus where the whole arrangement elevates and finally makes a step forward to oblivion with some fancy guitar soloing.

The song is designed around Michael Bolton vocal skills. Without him the song would be wacky kitsch. Bolton shows off but it never winds down to throwing every trick in the book and overplaying it to overkill. Bolton gets the right balance. And that gives the song a punch. It is a nice illustration of doing traditional sounding song with rather bawdy twist hidden inside.

MFT: Wes Craven - Deadly Friend Basketball Head Busting Scene XX

This is a scene from a 1986 film "Deadly Friend" directed by Wes Craven. In it you can see short but intense confrontation between a young woman and an old lady. They fight for the possession of a basketball. After a short struggle young woman overcomes old lady and throws her against the wall. Then she takes a basketball and throws it right into the old lady's head thus smashing it completely (David Cronenberg's "Scanners" style). Old lady's poor headless body then staggers around a bit, floundering, spraying blood before finally falling down. The end. 

Outside context - this scene is really funny surreal sketch that subverts tacky "girl fight" trope. But in the film it was supposed to illustrate sudden shift in character and turn to extreme hostility. As a mean for character study - it fails to make the point due to wrongful direction. Instead of developing the character it just shows gruesome violence in gratuitous manner.  The delivery is not shocking - it is almost slapstick. It wouldn't be out of place in Monty Python's Flying Circus. In fact - it works far better as an absurdist short.

As it is - it is one of the greatest scenes of over the top violence. It is standout scene in the film. It goes beyond films narrative and transcends into the realm of senseless. It gives way too much. It is needlessly brutal. It kills the story and put itself self-imposed bizarro land solitary confinement. 

***

"Deadly Friend" is very strange film. It tells a story of a boy-genius Paul who has very intense interest in technology which results in him building a robot BB. He also meets girl Samantha and for a moment it seemed like there will be a romance. They play basketball once but the ball gets into said old lady's house. BB tries to get it back but gets destroyed by the shotgun blast from the old hag. And then another tragedy strucks - Samantha's overprotective and abusive father lashes out and she suffers from an injury that renders her braindead on life support. But Paul is a smart boy and so he uses BB's microchip and revives Samantha. He combines two in one - "Frankenstein" + "Re-Animator". From then on Samantha's body is controlled by BB who vigorously explores his new state. Which leads us to the said confrontation. The story ends on a "Bonnie and Clyde" homage in which Samantha-BB is executed by police firing squad.

"Deadly Friend" caught Wes Craven in a weird moment of his career. He just had his biggest success to date - "A Nightmare on Elm Street" tore the house down in 1984 and launched a franchise but for the man himself - it did no favors. He was forced to jump from one potboiler to another - first with made-for-TV "Chiller", and then with the sequel to his cult classic "The Hills Have Eyes" which wasn't even finished because of production collapsed. "Deadly Friend" was supposed to be return to form. In its original form "Deadly Friend" was to be PG-rated Spielbergian meditation on the relationship between man and technology. But test screenings went poorly and so producers forced Wes Craven to retool the film into its present form. He added some splashy splatter gore here and there. It ruined films somber tone and turned it into unintentional absurdist po-faced comedy. I hope someday someone will redo the story as it should be told.