This is actually photoshopped. Ever so slightly. I drew this girl and I drew a pair of binoculars, they were not positioned as they are here. I saw them on the page next to each other and didn’t understand why I hadn’t drawn her looking at the binoculars. So I moved them with the power of the computer. I am a cheating hack.

There is no great story behind this image, it’s just something I drew in Savannah one day and thought there was something mysterious and interesting about it, enough to keep it around. I imagine that she is holding herself back, resisting the urge to pick up the binoculars, but she’s just about to crack and lift them to her face, and in the distance is something she knows she shouldn’t look at, something private and taboo, but she just can’t help herself.

Or birds. She could be planning to look at birds.

It’s true. I work in one of them. Dry towns, they’re called, for the uninitiated. These are places that never got around to repealing prohibition and now contain just enough votes against change to hold back the rest of the public from ordering a nice glass of wine with dinner. Why? It will destroy the community, of course!

Well, there is another side of the community that suffers from this mindset: the local business owners. And all the people who want to order a glass of wine and didn’t realize they had to bring their own. Oh yeah, and anyone who is in favor of forward progress.

Okay, Maybe I’m a bit biased.

I was commissioned, through EduComp, for the cause – to design a website to showcase the language of those working toward legislation that would allow beer and wine consumption at restaurants in one such town: Tisbury, otherwise known as Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts.

I should note that personally, I drink very little, perhaps one or two beers or a glass of wine in a month, although, like many, I went through a typical teenage binge phase. I blame the heat and madenning peer pressure of Savannah, Georgia. That’s beside the point, however: the legislation would be good for the town. As it stands, people can bring their own beer or wine to dinner, so the drunks are just as able to get drunk. If anything, this would be more regulatory, and it provides those who want to have a drink at a restaurant that option. I have had a lot of trouble understanding the logic behind the fight against it, aside from stubborn traditionalism.

Consider this a call to anyone who lives in Tisbury: please vote on this on April 14th. It’s a town meeting vote to get it on the ballot in 2010. It needs your help to pass. For more information, and some words from those involved in attempting to pass the legislation, visit the site itself: PreservingTisburysFuture.com

I will have a more comprehensive post in the web section about the process of the design of the site soon, and about upcoming websites, when they go live.

These couple images, along with many others in the same Somethingawful.com thread, spread relatively wide on the internet, becoming front page features on the aforementioned site, and having their image tags scraped off them to be posted by plagiarists on various other web pages. My username on those forums was caldrax and I posted several photoshops there, ranging between sloppy and funny, very authentic looking and unfunny, and sloppy and unfunny. These were a couple of the more technically adept ones, though the hilarity factor was low. I also did several potentially offensive ones, which may or may not be shared here, depending on how much I decide I care for my reputation.

The first image was the famed M.C. Escher, retouched to look like the Penguin. It was surprisingly easy to do, I simply cut and pasted in the Penguin’s face and layered on the texture used in the rest of the image to make it fit in. The source photo of the penguin already had a look of bulbousness about it, so I didn’t need to do any reshaping to match the spherical nature of the rest of the Escher image. It came out looking like it had been harder to create than it had, which is always nice.

The second image was harder to achieve, yet not as widely found to be amusing (Isn’t that always how it goes). Color is always trickier, and a lot of layering, clone tool, and various forms of trickery were used. Removing the old gigantic comb from the original Magritte (this may not be the exact image I used-there were several reproduction versions) proved to be the most difficult part, and placing the shadow was equally tricky. I was proud of the way that part ended up looking, and the wall behind it came out pretty nice as well. I must confess, however, that I was frustrated at being unable to find a batarang that looked exactly like what I was going for.

The thread inspired some really great photoshops (and some not so great ones), I recommend looking over the highlights that were later posted on Somethingawful.

brainwaves from ZF FILMS on Vimeo.

@brainwashedcom – (as in brainwashed.com – home of the brainwaves festival) one of my all time favorite music news sources, touching upon the darker side of my listening soul, has joined the land of twitter. I attented Brainwaves in 08 and was deeply thrilled to finally see some of my old favorites: Peter Christopherson, Meat Beat Manifesto, Matmos, and Stars of the Lid. I was also introduced to some musicians such as Marissa Nadler, Glenn Jones (who I met there and learned he’d had his album worked on by one of my childhood friends and classmates, Anthony Esposito), Boduf Songs, His Name Is Alive and many others that enticed me. Brainwashed has always been at the forefront of musical discovery, finding and helping bring success to those bands that eventually grew to relative stardom (Antony, Amanda Palmer, Devendra Banhart, and on and on) but often being overlooked by the powers that they inspire.

Brainwashed deserves credit for pulling culture out of the cracks and feeding it to many who desperately need it, and while that occasionally comes with a low dosage of condescension, their reviews and headlines are usually surprisingly optimistic and pleasant, rarely crucifying their subjects. For a counter-culture online publication with a dedicated base of rabid, often darkly dressed fans, that’s quite impressive.

The bottom line is: if you want to be a step ahead of the music scene, pay attention to brainwashed. Listen to their podcasts. I too have been guilty of ignoring them from time to time, and for that I always kick myself. On their site, they are currently wondering what they’re going to do with twitter. If you’re listening, brainwashed: keep us informed. Remind us when you update, tell us when there are brainwashed bands playing shows, tell us when the DVD is coming, let us know whenever you see Gary Wilson covering himself with baby powder. Tell us pretty much anything, we’ll listen.

By the way, I must show pride, I got this shirt at Brainwavesfest2008 and I am in love. Thanks kranky.

Okay, I don’t know if anyone who reads my posts will care about this aside from me, but I was excited yesterday when, on a whim, I decided to hunt for news about one of my favorite musicians, discovered back in 1995 when Trent Reznor was pimping him on Nothing Records, Kevin McMahon, aka Prick, aka Lucky Pierre, aka Fear of Blue, aka a million other pseudonyms (really Kevin, you need to stick to a name if you want to sell records) is still making music! He has a new song, that I won’t post here for the sake of keeping myself from potential trouble with the man, I’ll only say that it’s good, despite being extremely different.

For the uninitiated, Prick was sort of a one hit wonder with “Animal” back when “Closer” was the talk of the town, but the radio loving public failed to realize that the man behind the music was incredibly talented and diverse. Well, perhaps not failed to realize, but failed to care. His reclusiveness and general disgust with record labels didn’t win him any popularity contests either, but he continued to make music. He takes a notoriously long time between releases, but, and this is what I love: he dares to do something completely different every time.

To me, the most exciting musicians are those who refuse to conform to a style. Granted, there are those that do who I dearly love, and there is something to be said for getting a nice little package full of something you expect and are comforted by, but surprises are fun too, and I like to be challenged and blindsided by the music I listen to.

This is where Kevin McMahon comes in. He drops bombs of unpredictability not just with every album he releases, but every song within these albums. And he manages to do so while writing some of the most catchy, poppy songs I’ve ever heard. He is truly masterful, and I only wish he would come out of hiding more often, and maybe drop some of the Pseudonyms: the really big fans will listen to and love everything you release, Kevin. You don’t need to call it by different names, and you confuse our MP3 players in doing so!

Anyway, enough ranting. I found the man, and this website devoted to his music, and wanted to trumpet it to the world, or at least the world that has found this website. I also want to have something here to remind myself to keep checking in with the man behind some of my favorite songs.

A snippet from the recent interview to whet whistles:

The reason I haven’t pursued a recording contract after the Interscope/Nothing deal is mainly to assure myself the freedom that was jeopardized by entering into that experience. Record labels want/demand that you remain in the style of the previous release and give your fans what they “expect”. I don’t agree with that. I know there is a method to their marketing madness, but I’m more interested in songs as an expression of changing perspective or spontaneous fun rather than the same old soda with a different bubble… Even though many fans are lost along the way, I believe those who stay are in for a richer and more interesting experience.

Read the rest here.

(Art by Roger Von Golling – if anyone has a site link for him please comment, he’s awesome too)

Wolfie is 13 and goes to the Public Charter School on Martha’s Vineyard (oh hey, that’s him right there on the front page), and he does a rockin radio show on WVVY on Wednesdays at 1 PM for an hour. I’ve been recording his episodes, you can check out past ones in the Radio section. Today I had a scare, thinking the station was going to be down, but I slyly found a stream and was able to get it recorded. Here it is. 128kbps MP3 this time:

Wolfie – Strange Ways in 4D March 25th 2009

Found this stuck on the back of an ATM sign in Edgartown. I can’t tell if it’s an endorsement or not. Can you?

Text Reads: “Stop messin’ with our boats and fix the ozone depleting traffic mess in menemsha and get me a usable cell signal while you’re at it. It’s the traffic, stupid!”

(It’s a tourist based island living joke, I guess)

I just created a splash image and a front page to open the site. Partially influenced by a story I started writing a long time ago and never got around to finishing, and of course, influenced by the design of the site. I basically crammed all the elements of these pages together, while adding a few more.

Probably the oldest drawing ever recorded as drawn by me. I believe it was scanned with one of those old hand scanners, thus the grain and faded quality of the image. My mom put the little note on the side with the credit and the date. 1989. I was born in 1981.

As My mother puts it:

Maury sketched this profile in pencil on a piece of lined paper when he was 7 or 8 years old. I told him it reminded me of a Picasso. In later years, when it was mentioned, he said he did if of his brother Alex’s face/profile, who was sitting nearby. It’s instructive, if not illuminating, when reconstruction/reinventing one’s personal childhood history (as we all do), to have one’s own point of view but also that of one’s parents.

I was a little bit off, comparing the “Seed Divorced” to this image. For whatever reason I had always seen the old picture in my head as looking something like that one, but it’s less similar than I remembered. Regardless, I was glad that my mom drew my attention to it, it was good to make that comparison, and be reminded of what it really looked like. Thanks mom.

The next biggest news out of Stockholm since the Pirate Bay Trial is that Aequinox Vintage Clothing of Oak Bluffs is doing a trade show there (okay, maybe not the biggest, but big okay?)

Saturday, with Sarah Goodhart’s guidance, I designed a card advertising her upcoming web store. (With Swedish Babelfish) It was a quick design, but in crowd tests it was received by the ladies as “very cute!” A success if I ever had one! Good luck in Sweden, Sarah.

Link: Article about the show