One, two, three, four…monsters walking ‘cross the floor

Two of my favorite things in one place!

Feist + Sesame Street = What took them so long?

“Where is Barack Obama coming from?”

Kelly, it looks like you’re not the only one feeling uncomfortable with the New Yorker cover. Here’s an article discussing the controversy, and here is a link to the New Yorker feature article online, entitled “The Conciliator: Where is Barack Obama Coming From?”

For an idea of some of the possibilities presented of where Obama might be “coming from,” I have pasted the image below. (Are they fist-pumping?) A little further down, I have pasted another image featured by the New Yorker online. Two very different portraits!

Venice Beach: Rhetorical Mecca

Just off the skate park in Venice Beach, a few yards away from the boardwalk roller bladers, snake charmers, and sunburned hippies selling bundles of white sage, a group of graffiti artists quietly works. Every day, the cement wall –the last remnant of the Venice Beach Graffiti Pit–is covered with tags, portraits, and large-scale collaborative works of art. Early the next morning, a new group of artists begins again. They cover the previous day’s designs, responding to the wall’s patterns, images, and textures, and challenging the next day’s artists in a visual call and response. I visited the beach to catch a sunset with my sister and her husband during my LA trip this weekend. While we watched the artists work, my sister mused aloud, “I wonder how large that wall will eventually become.” She was referring to the layers and layers of paint literally making the monument grow. Later, I did a few online searches for the pit and found that the area has been somewhat immortalized in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 video game, spreading its influence even further.A few loyal photographers cover the evolution of art on the wall of the graffiti pit. Here’s a link to one. (You can also easily find footage on YouTube.)
http://www.labelnetworks.com/entertainment/graffiti_fall_06.cfm

The jury is still out on this one…

but the Legos are so damned cute!

Click on the link below to see a collection of poems brought to miniature Lego life.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/billward/sets/72157594251738664/

“my humps, they got you”

I am still a big fan of Alanis Morissette cover of Fergie’s “My Humps.” If you don’t know what I’m referring to, congratulate yourself on making good use of your free time. Then, go here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W91sqAs-_-g

It’s a strange and glorious mix of the ridiculous and the…kind of good? Mostly, it’s ridiculous.

Now, Tori Amos is giving impromptu performances inspired by other, um, cultural phenomena. Here are a few lyrics to a song she recently performed in concert. The best part of the audio is the audience reaction. After a few uncomfortable laughs, it’s completely silent. What are these singers up to?

Britney, they set you up
Is your contract winding up?
But you drank from the cup
Boy, this is what it looks like
Yes, I said, this is, this is what it looks like, Disney, yes

When a star falls down
When a star falls down

You may be a mother
Baby, you still need a mother
Yes, I may be a mother
But I still need a mother
To pick me up
Yes, to pick me up

Harlot: trailblazer extraordinaire

As our time to stand up and actually say something for ourselves draws near, I find myself a bit stumped. Yes, having creative arts in Harlot feels right. But what can I actually say when someone asks me the question, “Why showcase creative arts in a journal about rhetoric?” As my fellow harlots have allowed me to admit, I can’t answer this question as a rhetorician. It’s simply not my field of expertise. But I can answer this as a writer who, like many of my peers, is just looking for a good home for my own work.

Mostly, as Kelly mentioned, I think it is Harlot’s philosophy of inclusion–of breaking down walls, not choosing a side to step onto–that makes this journal so important for artists, writers, and audience. So far, a number of creative submissions to the pilot are fun, playful, and above all, wonderful pieces by artists collaborating, mixing medias, and moving in and out of their genres. It’s as if the pressure is off. There is no internal critic or censor. And the results are really exciting.

Musical Inspirations

“Whether in music or in fiction, the most basic thing is rhythm. Your style needs to have good, natural, steady rhythm, or people won’t keep reading your work. I learned the importance of rhythm from music — and mainly from jazz. Next comes melody — which, in literature, means the appropriate arrangement of the words to match the rhythm. If the way the words fit the rhythm is smooth and beautiful, you can’t ask for anything more. Next is harmony — the internal mental sounds that support the words. Then comes the part I like best: free improvisation. Through some special channel, the story comes welling out freely from inside. All I have to do is get into the flow. Finally comes what may be the most important thing: that high you experience upon completing a work — upon ending your ‘performance’ and feeling you have succeeded in reaching a place that is new and meaningful. And if all goes well, you get to share that sense of elevation with your readers (your audience). That is a marvelous culmination that can be achieved in no other way.

Practically everything I know about writing, then, I learned from music.”

— Haruki Murakami

Isn’t it true there’s an almost undetectable current, or rhythm, in the art, music, and writing that holds our attention long enough to actually move us? I stumbled upon this quote online; see the full NY Times interview here.

How advertisers break it down

Having spent several years working in advertising, I can no longer simply watch t.v. or flip through a magazine.

I now know that everything—from casting to level of retouching to the color of shovel a child is holding in a shot—is a belabored choice (by the way, did anyone else notice the beautiful lighting in the opening sequence of the new Harry Potter film?).

Will it soon be this way for all of us? Check out this Slate article about creative director Donald Gunn and his twelve kinds of ads, circa 1978. With his guidelines for categorizing commercials, perhaps Gunn was a better ad-man than we think.