More recent collage.

The devil...Britney...childhood...CPR...body building.
A little something for everyone...

Loving working with the old book material I’ve been finding around here. Especially stuff with kid’s drawings.

Politics...what a drag!

My buddy McGuire sent me a bunch of these ages ago, probably before I was blogging. Thought they were still funny and worth dragging the best few of them back out.

Reminds me of good old Morrissey on the Smiths’ The Queen is Dead record...
“I say Charles don’t you ever crave / to appear on the front of the Daily Mail / dressed in your Mother's bridal veil?”

War dims hope for peace.

[[“Headlines" by Robert Phillips, from Circumstances Beyond Our Control: Poems. © The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006]]

H E A D L I N E S

War Dims Hope for Peace.
Plane Too Close to Ground, Crash Probe Told.
Clinton Wins Budget; More Lies Ahead.

Miners Refuse to Work after Death.
Include Your Children When Baking Cookies.
War Dims Hope for Peace.

Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Experts Say
Prostitutes Appeal to Pope.
Clinton Wins Budget; More Lies Ahead.

Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half.
Couple Slain; Police Suspect Homicide.
War Dims Hope for Peace.

Stolen Painting Found by Tree.
Panda Mating Fails; Veterinarian Takes Over.
Clinton Wins Budget; More Lies Ahead.

Iraqi Head Seeks Arms.
Police Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers.
War Dims Hope for Peace.
Clinton Wins Budget; More Lies Ahead

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.

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

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!)

Wonder Boys (How does it feeeel?)

(Chabon at left, as pictured on The Simpsons, one of the great contemporary honors..perhaps cooler than his Pulitzer, with Jonathan Franzen, Tom Wolfe and Gore Vidal)

Birthday of two of my favorite writers today. Bob Dylan in 1941, and Michael Chabon in 1963.

Check out Jimi Hendrix doing “Like a Rolling Stone” here (oh, and also check out Zimmy’s 1966 version with The Band here). ’Nuff said.

If you’ve never read Chabon, start with The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay, which garnered him a Pulitzer for fiction. If you like that one, I’ve particularly enjoyed his two most recent books Yiddish Policemen’s Union and Gentlemen of the Road (the former a bizarre Yiddish Raymond Chandler opus of sorts, the latter a book thoroughly out of time, difficult to label—had it not been for its cover, which is contemporary and not awfully good, the book, with its odd old-fashioned illustrations, would feel like a treasure found at rare book shop).

Chabon said, “Literature, like magic, has always been about the handling of secrets, about the pain, the destruction, and the marvelous liberation that can result when they are revealed. If a writer doesn't give away secrets, his own or those of the people he loves, if he doesn't court disapproval, reproach and general wrath, whether of friends, family or party apparatchiks ... the result is pallid, inanimate, a lump of earth.”