Finally saw A Cock and Bull Story last night. I drew these pictures during it. I found it to be one of the more clever films I’ve seen in while. Leave it to the British to be literate and funny. I also dreamed I could fly last night. It’s been a while and it was good to dust off my wings.
Monthly Archives: May 2008
Tales of Brave Horsecookies
When I finally get back to my loft, I find an enormous box at the foot of the stairs. It is addressed to me and of course the elevator can’t be found. I wrestle the thing up several flights and I feel like Buster Keaton, when I notice someone filming my progress. My whole building has been invaded by a company of film players. The actors are all over the building pretending that they live there. They are even pretending to live in my studio where I push the box and ask someone what’s going on. The Camera then comes through the corridors and up the stairs in one long continuous shot as the drama unfolds in real time. There are intimate acts and gunshots and people I know and people I don’t and everywhere is the set, everyone are the players. Reality and fiction are completely blurred and I end up with a fairly large scene in the movie. Apparently the climax of the picture is a big wedding party on the outskirts of town and the whole company and I are loaded up into coach buses and taken off to the location/wedding/reception. When we get there it looks like an Italy I know from the movies of the early sixties: a few new modern housing blocks in a field of brick rubble and tall grass. They’ve set up a tent and strings of holiday lights and a fashionable band that I don’t know, but I think I’ve heard of starts to play and we all eat and drink and dance in the intermittent showers that cast a cinematic sheen on all the edges of brick. I am no longer sure if I’m an actor, or a person; did someone get married, or make a film… anyway it’s a pretty good party.
Teach Reach
I am on the campus of a modern university; so modern in fact, that it has a satellite campus…literally. They have built an enormous space station that serves as a quiet library to study in, etc. I’ve gotten it into my head to spend the night up there and watch one of the Star Wars films. When I get to the quadrangle with the space elevator, I find a pavilion displaying an exact replica of a soviet era atomic bomb. It’s all there, but the plutonium. I’m curious to see this once top secret object. An artist/engineer has set up an elaborate machine to render the bomb in various shades of molten silver. The silver is applied by a complex robotic arm with an old flibert head paint brush clamped to the end of it. I start talking to the artist and he convinces me to go get my video camera and document the process of painting the atom bomb in shades of silver and tarnish. As I head back to my room, a terrific storm blows up and all the students scramble. I take my shoes off and walk home in the puddles. I won’t take my camera out in the rain and I’m certainly not riding up to space in eighty mph winds. I’ll just watch Star Wars at home, or better yet get blown around the campus and wade in the puddles.
Notes
This is me on memorial day thinking about a possible new animation project and watching the fleet and the sky and thinking about the war(s).
The Works of Fire
Bridge
The Works
Went to the fireworks last night. Got to visit old friends; both human and painted. Video should be appearing soon.
The Sound of Thunder
I walked around the Chelsea Galleries yesterday… in large part to remind myself why I don’t really enjoy Chelsea Galleries, but it was nice to duck into them when avoiding the spring rains that came and went all afternoon. When I got home I heard the sound of thunder in the gathering dark. It took me a few rumbles to realize it wasn’t thunder, but fireworks and I ran to the roof to see the sky, but most of the action was hidden behind the skyline. Tonight they’re shooting more for the Brooklyn Bridge birthday. Fireworks season is upon us. Even better than street fairs.
Rain rain rain again
The Fair Street Fair