- posted by cjb @ 8:52 AM

 

My oldest friend, Mr. Steven Caldow, demonstrates the acoustic properties of cork flooring, as well as some other important attributes of the ecologically friendly medium.
- posted by cjb @ 10:40 PM

 
"During the year, many of the prohibitive signs were removed from the library. Dogs and smoking are still not allowed. People who damage books must pay for them. We still charge fines, but to remind mature adults of their responsibilities can become absurd, occasionally objectionable, and certainly often unaesthetic."
- posted by cjb @ 10:19 PM

 
Q:  Say, why are you making these pictures again?  Very few people understand them, and even fewer want to buy them.

A:  What counts is history asking us a question — about our content or purpose in a society of accelerating insecurity, including our own — that one way or another we need to formulate as sharply as possible, since we answer it with our lives.
- posted by cjb @ 7:21 PM

 
"This damned notion that art is a luxury. Perhaps for the rich it is. But for the disregarded, it's the only thing equal to their situation."  (@tejucole)
- posted by cjb @ 10:13 PM

 
Day-off revelation: Canada geese (& Canada goose goslings) really, really like apricots.
- posted by cjb @ 12:26 PM

 
"Weiner talked about the relationship between the timing and the truth of his statements as if he were giving a synopsis of a 'Dr. Who' episode. People had to understand that there was 'some timeline, some timeline in the continuum of resignation.'"
- posted by cjb @ 5:29 PM

 
"Repetition is the means by which the history of the world is affirmed."  (R. Murray Schafer)
- posted by cjb @ 2:38 PM

 

- posted by cjb @ 12:11 PM

 

Woodshedding #2, 2013

Difference from shared materials. Sharp-edged September Vancouver light.  Critics will probably only see mild pathological similarity, but there's also an echo here.

My judgment: #2 came faster than #1 and is better for any number of reasons mostly having to do with internal mirroring and repetition.  Eg., the red hydrant and the Ford's brake light; the diagonal arch formed by the bridge's streetlight and the streetlight on the corner; the vertical seam doubling the crane and the condo-construction photograph; and the sharp wheel and the fuzzed-out wheel, which I didn't touch or alter. The complicated cut-out shadow at lower left, and the zig-zaggy overlapped vehicles directly above it, which precisely rhyme with the lane and crosswalk lines beside them, are a great gift, one of those "abstract" intervals of reality I perceive more and more often now.  In passing: #1 was digitally framed and cropped after-the-fact, while #2 was screen-cropped, even to the point of moving between computers to play with different framing.
- posted by cjb @ 2:34 PM

 
At the Podunk Hollow Raytheon Pavilion

"Steely Dan played a few of their live favorites, including 'Show Biz People,' fueled by some fine Becker guitar work."
- posted by cjb @ 1:35 PM

 

- posted by cjb @ 4:11 PM

 
Long cranky revealing interview with two of my favorite artists, one definitely crankier than the other.

DF:  We play county fairs too. [W]e play nice fairs. They have sheep-breeding contests and things like that. I enjoy those. It's fun. Sometimes the audience is all farm animals. That's cool, too. Sometimes it's hard to tell these geriatric people apart from the farm animals, actually. It's all assisted living.

WB: I remember I was talking to a Haitian cab driver here in New York. I told him that when I was down in Haiti I heard about how when dinnertime came the mother would give a couple of pennies to the kids, and they'd go to the village and buy four pennies' worth of oil to cook dinner. He was quiet for a while and then he said, 'But that was a strong penny.'
- posted by cjb @ 9:49 AM

 

Woodshedding, 2013

"[A]n outgrowth of the aural tradition in jazz, where a player works out by ear and intuition the music he or she heard played in public."
- posted by cjb @ 9:36 PM

 

Local youngster makes good.  Somewhere up in heaven Guy Edwards is smiling down on kindred spirit M-A LeC.'s humor, humility, & massive talent.

"To prepare myself for my climb, and to ensure myself that I had the fitness required to do my link up safely, without exhaustion leading to poor decision making, I went for a training run. After getting off work early I jogged from my home to the 'Apron' of the Squamish Chief and proceeded to free solo 'Rock On', down climb Calculus Crack, jog to the base of Angels Crest, solo that as well, then run behind the Chief to Shannon Falls and solo Skywalker. After a swim in the beautiful pool below the upper tier of Shannon Falls I jogged back to the parking lot below the Apron and checked the time. It had been 5 hours since I left my home, I was pretty sure the Slesse mission would not be a problem. I was stoked!

I wanted to do the link up as soon as possible, while the approach to the Rib was still in good condition and before the pocket glacier approach to the Buttress deteriorated completely. But I had to work all week. I packed my bag Thursday night, and due to my lack of Vehicular Transport Means I walked directly from work to a Greyhound Bus station and cruised to Vancouver. I always feel bad-ass taking my climbing pack on the Bus with my fancy technical ice tool strapped to the outside... the bright yellow helmet, not so much.

I hitchhiked my way into the Fraser Valley, and was pleased to get picked up despite the visible ice tool on my pack. Luckily I don't look like a serial killer, although most serial killers don't look like serial killers either according to my Mother who works in a Correctional Facility.

Now comes the embarrassing part of the story. Once I was in the Fraser Valley, my dear Mother drove out and picked me up and gave me a ride to the start of the gravel road leading to the trailhead. Sorry Mom, I'll get a car soon. I gave her a vague description of what I was going to attempt, not giving too many details that I could fill her in on once I was back down in one piece. I started hiking the road towards the trailhead at 11:30 PM...."
- posted by cjb @ 9:10 AM

 

A smooth faux-70s counterpoint to that summery new Daft Punk record that's blasting on everybody's car stereo all up and down Main Street.  Or, more accurately, Aja's willowy Brazilian cousin, voiced in Portugese.
- posted by cjb @ 8:37 AM

 

"If you’re watching, cinematic realism is probably not your top priority.”
- posted by cjb @ 6:26 PM

 
"A form of asynchronous, organically overlapping storytelling..."
- posted by cjb @ 12:49 PM

 
The spatial coherence of multiple images implied through street signs; numbers; sunlight; position of background details.  "Is that Tobias in jail?"  Insisting on every detail as a potential signifier.  Asking viewers to read each image, even the blurry, more-or-less randomly framed & exposed ones, as equally meaningful in the reconstruction of the moment(s) that are the composite work's real subject. (Thus #5's seemingly odd or arbitrary cropping, tilted so as to include both the surveillance camera -- self-reflexivity! -- and the street address -- "4610" at the far right hand edge of the frame).
- posted by cjb @ 12:38 PM

 
An artwork depicting the before and after of an instant.

What the camera sees.

What it elides.

What it doesn't see.

"The ongoing moment."
- posted by cjb @ 12:21 PM

 

ACT (Aesthetically Claimed Thing): Helen Gahagan Douglas

"She was one of twenty.  In a later statement she told the House, 'I will not be stampeded by hysteria nor will I waver for political expediency.'" (Roger Morris, Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of An American Politician)
- posted by cjb @ 3:25 PM

 

977 W. 46th Street, panel 5
- posted by cjb @ 9:41 AM

 

977 W. 46th Street, panel 4
- posted by cjb @ 9:12 AM

 

977 W. 46th Street, panel 3
- posted by cjb @ 9:50 PM

 

977 W. 46th Street, panel 2
- posted by cjb @ 7:30 PM

 

977 W. 46th Street, Los Angeles CA, 2011, 2013.  Digital collage. 1 of several images, final size & hanging configuration TBD.  Somewhere between 9-14 differently shaped pictures on a large framed sheet of paper.  An art work that could not have been made without Michael Bluth's "ostrich car." The seldom-presented & by now probably rejected video version of Eviction Struggle shares something of the same spirit.
- posted by cjb @ 9:56 AM

 
New Steely Dan Album?  It's 'In the Air'

"I'm glad we turned into a big-time touring band later in life. In fact, it's almost like we planned it out that way."
- posted by cjb @ 5:28 PM

 

- posted by cjb @ 6:26 PM

 

Meeting on a Sidewalk, 2013.  Digital collage.

"The term life used in art is something not to be held in contempt, for it implies all of existence and the province of art is to react to it and not to shun it."  (E. Hopper)
- posted by cjb @ 5:55 PM

 

Return of the Dark Brothers

Long, well researched- & written- article accurately capturing the sensibility of two artists I admire.

"Over the next hour they drink coffee and eat Fig Newtons and occupy chairs in a room with big speakers and instruct an engineer where to begin and end the excerpts, one from each song. When they're done, they will take a taxi down Broadway to a jazz club in the West Twenties and listen to Ray Bryant, a piano player who worked for a while with Miles Davis, among others. 'On his own,' Fagen says, 'he has a little more of a gospel feel.' They will arrive late and sit unobtrusively at the back of the room and drink Cokes and eat dinner and applaud several of the solos. At the end of the set, Fagen will introduce himself to Bryant and enumerate the Bryant albums he has in his collection, and Bryant will say, 'Well, it sounds like you got all of them.' The older jazz musician sitting with Bryant, who, like Bryant, has no idea that Fagen might be anyone other than, say, a lawyer or perhaps an accountant, will regard him as a rude white guy who has interrupted his conversation, which pains Fagen and leads him to think that he shouldn't have disturbed Bryant in the first place, except that nearly since childhood, he has had the habit in these small clubs of approaching musicians he admires. Fagen will return to the table, where a few moments will pass before the waitress will inform him and Becker that they have to leave, because the table has been booked for the second set, which is sold out."
- posted by cjb @ 10:37 PM

 

Wayfarers, 2013.  Digital collage.
- posted by cjb @ 9:40 AM

 

Brother Dru, dropping science:

"There are more people at Keyhole Hot Springs than there used to be. The road goes further in than it used to. They want to put a power plant at Keyhole Falls. There's a whole new pumice mine on the Athelstan side. What would Randy Stoltmann think of this? What would John Clarke think of this? What, indeed, would Mr. Doolittle think of this? In the 1890s Stanley Smith and Mr. Doolittle traversed the whole Bridge-Lillooet complex, living off the land and shooting goats and ptarmigans for food. 'One suit will not withstand a journey such as this.' Nowadays you'd get busted by a game warden if you tried that shit, except that most of the game wardens have been fired. Our methods of interacting with the land have changed beyond recognition over the last hundred-odd years. It's worthwhile to remember that the First Nations saw this landscape not as unspoiled wilderness but as a place that had been intensely and intensively managed since the dawn of time, when Raven cracked the shell."
- posted by cjb @ 9:53 PM

 

Babylon Sisters big band cover, Fender Rhodes solo.  From Afro Blue: M. Sasaji & the L.A. All-Stars.  SD covers aren't everyone's favorite, but this is something special.
- posted by cjb @ 8:28 AM

 

This video says more about the so-called methodology behind some of my photographs than anything I could ever put into words. The Fender Rhodes ("Lucy") doesn't belong to the guy seated behind it, but that's definitely not stopping him from channeling his own enthusiastic interpretation of its owner's sound.
- posted by cjb @ 9:25 PM

 
First & Last "Post Title" You'll Ever See Here

Recently, Blogger's made some ridiculous, poorly conceptualized & even more poorly communicated changes to the post interface.  Scarce here for a few days until a/ Blogger fixes things, or, b/ Anodyne 2.0 is up & running on a more user-friendly platform.
- posted by cjb @ 6:44 PM

 

Now Hiring: Full-Time Bookseller 

Pulpfiction Books, Vancouver’s largest independent bookstore, seeks a mature, enthusiastic individual interested in joining us as a full time bookseller.

The successful candidate will:

• Work a minimum of 24 and up to 40 hours per week. The position will be part time in the short term, but will likely become full time within a 4 month period.

• Not currently be attending college or university full time, or plan to within the next 12 months.

• Be available for a variety of shifts, including mornings, evenings, and weekends.

• Possess good practical intelligence, and the ability to work quickly and multitask under pressure. Please note that this position involves a lot of physical and mental activity, and is best compared to fast-paced warehouse or restaurant work. Those interested in standing behind a cash desk socializing and/or being paid to read will not be a good fit for this position.

• Have previous customer service or supervisory experience. Previous experience in bookselling is preferred but not required. Some of our most valuable staff came to us with no previous bookselling experience.

• Have a wide familiarity with contemporary literary fiction and non-fiction.

• Already possess an undergraduate degree or equivalent work history.

• Bring other skills and abilities to the table. Examples: social media (Twitter; Blogger); basic accounting and/or bookkeeping skills; carpentry; HTML; SQL, PHP & MYSQL coding experience, etc. etc. etc.

We offer competitive compensation and a vibrant, non-corporate work environment.

To apply for this position, please forward a detailed resume to pulpbook@gmail.com.

Please, NO phone calls, non-resume email queries, or walk-in requests for employment. 

We thank all applicants for their interest, but may, depending on resume volume, not be able to reply to everyone.
- posted by cjb @ 2:49 PM