Too much Björk? Possibly Maybe. ©

TUESDAY, JUNE 8, 2010


Too much Björk? Possibly Maybe. ©

I don’t know if this is possible.

My first conscious contact was seeing this lady standing on the red carpet in the swan outfit.

IIRC Joan Rivers did not have many kind words to say. The day after on the fashion show on E, Melissa and the others seemed even more astounded. There was a lot of laughing about this somewhat odd young woman. What shot through my brain like a hot poker was: “Gawd, she must be talented!”

It did not take much research to confirm my suspicions. This lady was very comfortable in herself. Not afraid of it or anything.


Time passes. Like everything; focus changes.

Not everyone is going to like or appreciate your tastes in music or the many other things that function as the foundations of friendship. Some friends are still turning their brains to pulp listening to the Grand Funk Railroad Silver Dollar Album or Aqualung at 100% volume. Most are wearing hearing aids now as the result of this addiction. Eearbuds save friendships!

Is it hard for vegans to break out of their claverns (intended spelling… think Cheers… think Urban dictionary… think whatever comes to mind or if you’d like and to make SpellChecker happy, think covens) and mix in the real world with carnivores? Are any PETA folks throwing the blood vegans?

In her “Possibly Maybe” video, music is paired with the visual impact of the composition to impart the multi-leveled message the artist intends. For most this is it. The exception that proves this rule is the unfortunate brain dead. In our world of bleach bottle cardboard punchout blondes, it is nice to have respite. Lately, it is not the Who speaking to me thru “Tommy” or the Beetles flying a giant jet right thru my head in “Back to the U.S.S.R.” or even the album “Hair” or “Jesus Christ Superstar”.

Sometimes when asked a question like: “What are you listening to?” you wonder if maybe some one thought you should have put on the earphones. Or, is it better to immerse others. It might be something they would benefit from hearing. Before the advent of the iPod, back in the days of the portable BoomBox as big as a hybrid car, I would have given a definitive answer. A most unambiguous and resounding one that indicated some things, like cow farts, are better not shared. Or, some tattoos.

When people want to put things out there they do intend to share, it is nice when you are all on the same page. And, want to be. “Pleasure Is All Mine” shares some pretty coherent thoughts and philosophy in pop up boxes in an instrumental video.


The Medium is the Message… Marshall McLuhan: you got it right all those years ago, back in the anarchy of my youth. I jumped on board with both feet. I made it my life: the sign business.


I have one sign still out there, hanging on by the skin of its teeth under a layer of Kudzu that has been on its same background for over thirty years. It was mural and logo painted on a corrugated wall that was 14’ x 100’. The entire wall was removed and moved to a new location because it would have been far too expensive to do a rerun on a different background. Painting one dimensional art on a three dimensional background is not for the weak of heart. No patterns were used we relied on a hand produced scale drawing. We worked with yardsticks and high math using grids to do the transfer. We painted with lead based paint because we were not worried children would chew up the steel background AND we wanted it to last.

When we painted it where it was originally, the owner had made me mad by continuing to add unreasonable demands, on a piece of art I was pretty much giving him for free, in an attempt at self promotion. It was far easier to do it once on the paper than it proved to be putting it on the wall and then modifying it from the original customer approved original proof. To architects or contractors these are Change Orders.

When we finally got to the end of the job, as we were taking down the scaffold; he had that light bulb exploding in his head kind of “just one more thing” idea. We had to take down the scaffold completely and move it to another location on that fourteen thousand square foot Medium to fulfill his ‘last request’ that almost was.

I had steam pouring out of my ears and nose as we built the scaffold up and began to paint. Where the wall was there was no way to drag the scaffold to move it because right behind the scaffold was a sheer twenty foot cliff. We had to dig holes and put posts in the cliff, and build a platform to even put the scaffold up. We had done this only nine times previously as we edged down the cliff, one “drop” at a time, with our eight foot wide scaffold. We hung off the sides a little on each stop so we didn’t have to move it as many times as one hundred is divided by eight.

It was then I thought of Michelangelo. Although not the Sistine Chapel, this job was taking almost as long. I did not have an army of apprentices, just the faithful and trusty George helping me complete this work of art. We were well into our third season working on that wall and in our Panhandle Florida Hell since we started in late winter. It was in the triple digits every day punctuated by the daily afternoon thunderstorms that made the humidity approach the same numbers. Wonderfully, we had a north facing light wall with the sun in the Northern Hemisphere so the reflection blasted us in the face like the heat from a blast furnace. Those healing rays of natural sunlight nourished our skin cancers as it overdosed us with Vitamin D. Our patron was not Julius II or even Paul III. Our Cardinal Carafa again interfered. We would be forced to make his “acceptable changes” ruining the integrity and beauty of our original layout. Or, so he thought.

Our patron was going to force us to complete this to his satisfaction. He still owed me a sizable portion of the about minus five dollars an hour he was paying me for every hour I had spent on the wall after I paid George his wages. He was not going to pay the balance unless or until we painted his ugliness right in the middle of our masterpiece. AAAARGH!

We would exact our revenge. I could not paint him onto the wall with donkey ears or anything because that was not in the new revised and approved sketch. But, I had another idea.

George and I painted six hundred and sixty six flies on that new improvement to OUR wall. They were not big flies and you could not see them unless you knew what to look for and where and then looked hard. We decided they should be evil biting Yellow Flies. It increased the time it took us to complete our commission. I am still happy we did, elated in fact. I am still giddy.

I did get to learn a lot more about George’s “Theory of the Universe” and the construction of George’s perpetual motion machine. George got the extra salary. I was much broker but like George, far happier.

Over a full minute of animated stick drawings in a music video proves that I am not the only one still hanging on. “Nameless” seals the deal. Check it out in the previous post.

Too much Björk? Not yet.

Often 4:22 is just not enough time to get a message across. It is going to take a lot longer to insure some things continue. Research IS the answer to most of the questions we face as long as it provides more than just another batch of unanswered questions. Unless, what we are searching for is more questions. My life is a search for more questions and not necessarily the answer to any previously posed.

Check it out in a good Google session (About 74,900,000 results). For some 4:22 is just not a random set of numbers. When answers are wanted; it becomes necessary to target the search a little to cut down on the questions.

Speaking of random numbers… Is it a good sign or a sin when you see the original business phone number you had is now used by the Catholic Church to help prevent abortions and then you are relieved that you had one of the numerals wrong when you Googled it? Sometimes the phone is just another interruption in our search for questions.


A muse is a very powerful person. Too often it is hard to be our own muse, but we must continue to try.

Great ideas do not come often. I am going to have to open that envelope one day or put it in my will that someone else does it to see if I really did own a modified DeLorean or if it was just another hair brained idea.


The Medium is the Message. The Medium is the Message. The Medium is the Message.


I am also going to have to load up the ladder on top of the old Land Cruiser, drive up to that old wall and peel back some kudzu to see if every one of those 666 Yellow Flies still has the cartoonish face of my patron. Nature is helping to preserve the unnatural by shading it from the punishing effects of the sun. That reminds me I need to check with my Dermatologist. I wonder if it would look odd if I started wearing a light colored Burqa?

Too much Björk? Not enough Burqa? Possibly Maybe.


Thanx Lee.


Try this one… “Sitting on the park bench -- eyeing little girls with bad intent. Snot is running down his nose…”©


Jo: can I borrow that hearing aid and are you up for a trip to Iceland?