Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Modern Home Medical Adviser.

Haven’t posted any collages for a while. So here’s one that’s fairly different from the earlier stuff in NH. Not as figure-portrait oriented as they’ve been in the past. Whatever.

The drawing at the bottom is, I think, a chicken and was done by an actual child...not a childish drawing from my hand. The “babie young deer” tape at the bottom was on a package from my friend Sai.


Sunday, June 15, 2008

Things we like: John Fahey

Hadn’t listened to Fahey in a long time. First discovered him back when I was originally flipping out about Leo Kottke in the 70s. Re-discovering Fahey’s 1965 record The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death, which I recently downloaded from eMusic after the vinyl version long ago went to live who knows where.

A strange man, John Fahey, with an unusual set of guitar styles. This album, originally released on Riverboat Records and later reissued by Fahey's own Takoma label, has a lot of rough edges in terms of the recording but a tremendous amount of power when it comes to the music. Fahey was at the top of his game, alternately playful and dark, so there's never a dull moment. There is always something new to be heard on each playing.—from Steven McDonald on AllMusic.com

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

WE can solve it (?)

I’ve been getting stuff from this organization called WE. They have a snappy logo in green circle, where the “m” in “me” has been turned upside down to make a “we”—as with wine labels, I have a sneaking suspicion that when people care enough to REALLY do design right, they must care about the rest of it (of course the Nazis had a pretty strong graphic design presence going for them...so sometimes my theory is a maybe a little awry).

Anyhoo...haven’t paid a lot of attention to their mail, despite the snappy logo, but today was really stopped by the brilliance of their new ad campaign to fight global warming. Check it here.

They have “polar opposites” (you know, like POLAR ice caps melting...) like Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi, Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson, etc. The pairs are sitting on couches and talking about how they may disagree on most things but the problem of global warming is something they can agree on. TV spots aren’t going to bring about change in themselves, but it’s a strong thing, I think. They are doing an online contest to choose the next unlikely pair.

I nominated Al Franken and Anne Coulter (while I would prefer to see Coulter taking her chances with a mother grizzly defending her cubs, maybe this is the chance for her to do a good turn...good luck Anne!)