Quote of the week

'To be a warrior is not a simple matter of wishing to be one. It is rather an endless struggle that will go on to the very last moment of our lives. Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born an average man. We make ourselves into one or the other.'  Carlos Castaneda

I was going to title this post Surrounded by Silence but that's a Prefuse 73 album so any sense of originality went out the window. Suffice to say 'average' is the keyword here.

Myth

From Disinfo:
Myth's central importance does not end with our art or religions. It is not solely a dusty world of broken clay pots and tablets written in dead languages. Our myths determine how we engage with the world, how we enter into it. How we treat ourselves and one another. Far from being archaic relics of the past, myths will determine our future. Even if we are unaware of them, they will continue to affect us. More.

Hail Mary Mallon

These guys have an imminent release. Can't wait. Watch the HD clip:

last day

Nicked from Thrasher. A random 'my last day at work for 2 weeks' pic.

basically, fuck you

Like Galileo, I wish I could laugh at the extraordinary stupidy of the mob. I am such a reactionary child sometimes...

Sports clips - May

Yeah I know it's April still, but I'm not going to be on here much the next couple weeks - so...

You cannot fuck with Evander. Dude was some kind of lion/rhino/human hybrid. And I've posted this exact same clip on here before somewhere, but it's Laird - so whatever dude.

Crit.

I want to get a T-shirt printed that say’s
YOU ARE AMAZING
In a really large font
For almost everyone I know to think it’s about them
Delusional
Shallow
Blinkered souls

Sarcasm being the lowest form of blah blah blah
I’m happy at the bottom
Thanks very much.

Crit 2.

Contrary to popular belief
You aren’t special
You are not awed just because you are gifted
You are a subtle contradiction of the worst kind
You are not a spiritual human being
You are not ‘one love’
Sad and insecure as the rest
Of us
You exist
Barely
On the edge
Over it
You exist
And that is all.

Piss Christ

Andres Serrano's Piss Christ has been destroyed by Christian protesters who

broke into a gallery in Avignon, France, and slashed the photograph.

After reading a really interesting issue of the New Statesman today (check me out) dealing with a lot of issues on comparative religion and atheism, I wasn't really surprised to read about THESE DICKHEADS, just a little disappointed about the futile predictability of it all.
 

The religious superstition is encouraged by means of the institution of churches, processions, monuments, festivities....The so-called clergy stupefy the masses....They befog the people and keep them in an eternal condition of stupefaction” Tolstoy.

Welcome back!

Getting my coffee this morning I witnessed the manager telling - sorry - asking one of her staff to fill the banana tray. Apparently they have to hide the stalks. She literally showed them how to correctly lay a banana in a box; 'So like this, but not like this. Ok?'

Now I know I have had to do some demeaning shit to get paid in the past, but surely that girl has a qualification in something - and working in a coffeeshop is just a part time thing while she finishes her thesis in molecular biology? Though her English was so bad that when I got my coffee and said thanks, bye, she replied with a big smile and 'thank you welcome back!'.

On the art of horror movies.

Spun out on pills and
Not even the good kind,
The normality begins its daily take
Take
Take.

I flick what’s left of my soul into the coin tray
The fragments clang and echo sharply as they hit the metal and
I’m waived on through the gate - into tomorrow.

And the cars are just squares of metals driven by
Squares of flesh.

Even the trees are fabrication,
A child’s blocks of brown and green plastic
Desperate to stagger the onset of human existence.

And none of this is art.
None of this destroys or creates -
Flames out the life or drowns the stomach in nourishing milk.

But then there is the art,
And even that is not really
Art.

The paintings
The photographs,
The words and language.
All failures at arts great game.

The sculpture sometimes exceeds the limit -
The stone and bronze and marble and
Mirrored steel,
That intrude like a wrecking ball.

Causing them to veer off course
Out of the grid lines,
To panic and eventually flee.

The real art comes from the prosthetics
And blood capsules,
And putty and scalpel and resin,
And exploding heart and brain,
The flying eye and chainsaw,
The scream - the trickle.

The real art resides deep within exaggerated death.
And all of this done with a smile,
With cameras and scripts and
The hot blonde who is always the first to
Go.

Sports clip of the month - April

For a lack of anything else creative or interesting to post today...

Sugar Ray in a rare loss. I know most of these fights are in/around the same weight class but that’s where the action was. Duran would go on to quit pretty unceremoniously in their second meeting.
And then some Clyde Drexler. If Clyde was an actor – he’d be Cool Lester Smooth in The Wire.

First Orbit

We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special. Stephen Hawking

This weekend I shall be mostly (not) listening to

Was going to have a good old time listening to this over the next 2 days. 3 discs of re-mixed and extra tracks... But seeing as Amazon can’t get their act together and post a CD in less than a week (5 working days my ass) It’ll have to wait until next week. Bollocks.

Look at the pretty pictures

Like a lot of people growing up with skateboarding in the late 80's early 90's, exposure to new people places and tricks usually came from magazines before videos. Transworld Thrasher and R.A.D were the staples at the time, with Slap and Big Brother among others, coming later. So back in dreary South East London we'd plow through these pictures of smooth streets, new parks and blue skies in the middle of which some kid would be mid-pop or grinding some block or another. Some of the photographers always stood out as having a particluar style and like the people they would shoot - were instatly recognisable, at least to the trained eye. Here are links to 3 of my favourites in the field: BLABAC, ATIBA, and the OG BK. (and a shout out to TLB.)

Welcome to the X-ray department.

These soft surroundings cause words to fall from my head

I forget where I was going and slow down to a halt

Sickly sweet music rises like an ocean swell

Like the nausea that comes with great pain

And it makes you gulp for air

Your lungs burn your legs kick

And you just about manage to tread water

They all laugh

Over and over

At nothing

In unison like a hydra on ecstasy

If only

If only

The vapid air becomes like smoke

Like fibrous crystals of cancer and suffocation

Filling your lungs and forcing you to squint

Look at them all in a new light

Artificial and tinted rose

I cannot remember what I was saying

Or where I was going except that it was the

Fuck away from here.

Running up the down escalator.

It is a time of no life lived. A time of desert wind and ghosts on the horizon. It is a time of no family. No respite. We are all stranded on distant shores. Guilty and under blackened cloud. We are flowers in the dirt. Dry and dying and joyous and absurd in all our colour and weakness. It is a time of closed doors. Broken backs. Smiles across stupid faces and lie upon lie upon Lie.

And we remain under the gun. The hammer. The rain. The weight of love and the whole of the whole of the world. Driving onward like tanks over a thousand skulls. Hill after hill of the dead. Long gone and voiceless. It is a time of chaos. Of no words. Of no typewriters or ribbons or pencils or art. A time of pointless conversation and useless prose. It is a time of gaps in our heads. Of gaps in our lives. Broken backs smiling faces. Lie upon lie.

Westenberg

While working 'in photography' (sorry) for so many years, I met a lot of very successful and/or well known photographers. Unfortunately in that business, very few of them are what you'd consider artists, fewer still were actually nice guys. Kevin ticked both those boxes.

When you see his site, along with all the Mojo covers you'll recognise, I'll guarantee there's at least 3 of those albums in your collection. Here's one of my favourites:

'Nothing can intimidate me, I just go out and destruct and destroy.'

A new feature on the channelzero blog – Sports Clip of the Week! Though just a forewarning, I’m trying to break up the skateboarding clips but these will still essentially all be basketball and boxing – ‘cos they’re the only other sports I’ve ever been into.

We’ll start off with a double header, MJ vs MH. (just the first round of the Hagler-Hearns fight is actually better than 80% of the any other boxing match in the last 20 years. Fact.

For no good reason

Was reminded of this while readin the Hosoi post on Chrome Ball. Was maybe my favourite bit of Chin, aside from the San Francisco street bit.

BOREDOFTHIS dotcom

Check out this newly launched AMAZING site:

Lu will be updating with a lot of various art and culture news including upcoming art/photography shows and articles and books of interest among a great deal of other stuff, on a regular basis so bookmark it!

USA! USA!

It is forbidden to kill, therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. Voltaire


Fuck the US Army.

Moment

Ever thought 'and where in the hell was I..?' Swear to god I'm actually surprised that when these 2 touched, the universe didn't collapse in on itself due to some tear in the space-time continuum.

Pic by Bob Gruen.

Liz Collini's work is great.

Pretty high on the list of things I don't understand

is 'skateboarding through fire'. Other than that, this is a really nice clip.

TransWorld 2010 Skate & Create Documentary Part 1 from Chris Thiessen on Vimeo.

Dreaming

Eve Arnold

Thought I'd post up a nice image after choosing not to watch the Marilyn Monroe Doc last night. I'm of the opinion that private conversations should remain private so why broadcast them? Anyway - Eve Arnold has always been one of my favourite artists and you never need a reason to justify looking at MM.

Quote of the day

Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.  John Steinbeck

BDB*

While Isaac was perfecting his 'B-i-i-i-i-z  -  M-a-a-a-a-rk' technique (true story) I came across this clip which alongside Doug E Fresh doin' it to death, has the best Shante/Biz clip on the internet @3.03:

*(that's Boogie Down Bronx, for all you younguns)

Quote of the day

You are welcome to your intellectual pastimes and books and art and newspapers; welcome, too, to your bars and your whisky that only makes me ill. Here am I in the forest, quite content.

Knut Hamsun