Fingerboredom Video Shoot

Hey, so these are the first public images of Fingerboredom. The fingerboard master is Drew Gale (dig that hole in the shirt, Drew) and the action camera man is Chris Peters.
I haven't sorted through all the images yet, but hers are a few that should give you an idea as to what is going on.
It's hard to tell how good Drew is in still pictures. In fact it's hard to believe what he's doing with your naked eyes. It looks like he's holding the board airborn with his thumb, but it's not. The board is just being handled by momentum and a little bit of stickiness in the skin. And until you see Drew doing it, the whole thing sounds ridiculous and unimpressive. It's hypnotizing.
And Chris' camera work is going to be exciting. He trailed the board up and down the ramps and he shot it tracking side to side. This is very exciting indeed.

Lyrics for a Broken Song

I don't care who you are,
The oily skin is my weapon.
It takes three years of gestation
For the little fucker to appear.
It's disgusting and I'm glad,
The filth is charming,
Call me Prince Charming,
Call me your nothing,
Whatever, I'm older now,
And I still can't believe
This disappointment that sits in my lap,
Like my curled up companion
Missing its messy bits
Kissing its kissy lips
Shaking its limbs
A shivering ficus,
No one is like us,
Except everyone else.
So, farewell to arms
And farewell to legs
Farewell to the stuff in between.
I'm not a poet,
So shut the fuck up,
I'm just doing my best
To ruin the art-form,
So go grab a paint brush,
Or hammer a song,
It's all fucking ugly
And there's too much of it too.

Listen to the radio,
The places in between
The cacophany of hit music
And the ridiculous noise making heads.
It sounds like the ocean,
Or better yet, it sounds like the wind
Pushing through the aircraft
When the doors have blown off.

35 FUCKER!

35!

I can't believe I'm going to be 35 in a few days! WTF!!??? What am I supposed to do with that? How is it that this happened? Should I call the cops?

Richard Jackson in Art In America

Richard Jackson, my boss, has a feature in this month's Art In America. It has a few decent images. The last piece pictured in the article is the piece I worked on. It's hard to tell what's going on, but that's sort of how the piece is. You can't view the interior of the box directly--only through the video projections of it on the walls of the gallery. I think there are some "knot holes" cut in the wall, but they are small. Take a peek...

No Delay

Okay, I'm continuing on my political rant.
Apparently, Tom Delay went to visit some of the Katrina victims in the Houston Astrodome and he was overheard telling some kids, "Isn't this fun? It's kind of like camping!" And the kids looked at him in this confused way and just nodded their heads.
Gee, isn't this fun? We lost everything in the flood, we have missing relatives and friends, we have no place to live, and we have no future. This is fun. Thanks, Mister Delay.
And you wonder why there are race relation problems in this country.

Oh, and more good stuff. Apparently when Laura Bush went to visit, she handed out one plate of food which an assistant handed to her, for a photo op and then promptly went away. This follows on the heels of Barbara Bush saying how these victims were under-privelaged anyway and that living in the Astrodome was really kind of a step up...

The loving arms of America embraces all of its citizens. You can tell they care because they gave all the victims $2000 debit cards which they couldn't get because they had to prove their residency in the affected areas which all washed away in the flood. Oh, they took away the debit card program yesterday. Though, apparently, they can still get $2000 deposited directly into their bank accounts, many of which don't have bank accounts.

What is wrong with our government--Estate Taxes

By the by, if you haven't heard, the Bush administration is trying to pass legislation this week to cut estate taxes. These taxes affect only the 2% wealthiest people in America. It will be $70 million in lost revenue. During a time of war and natural disaster, this makes as much sense as the last tax cut these clowns committed to. Ah, but here is the good part. The story is that to make up for half of the lost revenue of the estate tax cut, they are looking at cutting back on welfare, food stamps, and student loans. Well, I'll be. They are waging, not an ideological war, but a class war. No wonder they waited so long to help the Katrina victims. The more I've heard about how things are being handled down there, the more I'm convinced that it's not incompetence, but malicious neglect. I've heard a story told by a man who drove out on his own from Texas to help victims. In spite of the reports of the danger and violence and difficulty to get around in the area, the man got into New Orleans with now problems and all he could see were military people and a few locals who were ill or trying to get out of town. He came across a handful of army guys. These soldiers went AWOL because their unit was doing nothing. There were 80 soldiers protecting a supply warehouse, meanwhile there were still thousands of people in need of help. So a small pack of soldiers couldn't take it anymore and split. This man and these soldiers stole some boats and started rescuing people. A few hours later a sheriff pulls up and apologizes to them because he has orders from FEMA to get them out of the water. FEMA wanted to coordinate all movements and they were not officially operating under their jurisdiction. I hate this administration.
Oh, by the way, Michael Brown, head of FEMA was president of the Arabian Horse Association from which the other members sued him to have him removed because of incompetence. And second in command of FEMA is the guy who organized Bush's fundraising campaign (party planner). Third in command is the head of Maverick Video, the guy who produced Bush's promotional videos from his last campaign. None of them had any prior disaster organization experience prior to being hired to run FEMA. Michael Brown has 136 disasters listed on his resume (all while learning on the job at FEMA). One disaster was the space shuttle Columbia explosion. Admittedly, cleaning up the debris and chemicals are important, but come on... And four others listed were from one snow storm in the northeast a few years back which affected four states--Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. Don't you feel safer now? Before this administration came into power I was terrified because the economy was so good and we weren't occupying any other countries. Now, I sleep well at night knowing that if a disaster hits, we will have an Arabian horse trainer (who was fired) leading the National Guard and other disaster rescue branches. Sleep tight suckers!

Work, by the way

So those who have no idea what I'm doing for a living, here it is. I work for the artist Richard Jackson. He's very popular in London and Paris and Zurich. The images are of the work I am currently finishing for Richard. The final completion of the piece will occur on site where he will hook up a pump full of paint and it will squirt from the beer bottle dick and the urinals and perhaps from the anus of one of the bears. The paint action occurs without an audience or documentation. The finished pieces are the remnants of this action--returning sculpture to painting.

FEMA Stupid

Oh, by the way, the head of FEMA, the one who blamed the citizens of New Orleans for not leaving the city, he doesn't really have any experience handling disasters. He is a horse trainer. Why is he head of FEMA? And why hasn't he been fired? It's typical Bush cronyism. I wish he or someone in his administration would at least once admit that they fucked up. Oh, and Halliburton is heading the rebuilding in the Katrina-affected areas. The very same Halliburton that has double charged the US government for food and supplies in Iraq's rebuild. The same Halliburton that is missing tens of millions of federal funds that no one seems to be investigating. The same Halliburton that has done such a good job of rebuilding Iraq. I hope Cheney gets a free vacation there for the holidays. He really deserves it.
More fun news: Did you see Bush when he first landed in Louisiana and came out and hugged those two suspiciously clean and pretty light skinned black girls in front of what looked to be some camp giving food and aid? Well, after the photo-op concluded, the camp wrapped up and disappeared. It was, apparently, all a staged event.
Oh, and Al Quaeda now has taken over a town in Iraq on the Syrian border. They killed all the officials and many of the modernized Iraqi women there; Zarquawi has labelled them whores.
We live in such a great world...

More Presidential Nonsense

Okay, so George just got off his ass and is now just deploying National Guard reserve backups. You know, the problem is, most of their primary equipment is in Iraq. And why didn't he ready them before the hurricane hit? They knew it was going to do damage. They might have been able to get in there to help now rather than four days from now, which is how long it will take for them to get to the areas in need. And he says Red Cross will be making a million meals for people in the next day or so. Um, there are at least a million people displaced and in need of meals. So, he's saying we have made enough meals for some of you for one day. Good luck. I'm going back to the ranch to get some "work" done. There are so many more things I've already forgotten. I don't know how to express myself...