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Archive for the ‘Neat Stuff’ Category

NEWSFLASH: GODZILLA FLATTENS PHILLY!

Posted in Current Events, Favorite Things, Neat Stuff, tagged , , , on November 5, 2009| 4 Comments »

hideki matsuiThe World Series ended last night with a bang as an aging Hideki Matsui (AKA Godzilla) single-handedly slugged his New York Yankees over the Philadelphia Phillies.  He drove in 6 runs with 3 hits including a soaring home run off longtime Yankee nemesis Pedro Martinez on the way to a 7-3 victory.  It was the 27th championship in the storied history of the team.

It was a really good Series between arguably the two best teams in baseball.  The Phillies, last year’s reigning champs, were a formidable opponent and a very likable group that played the game with full effort.  They could have easily won any of these games.  However, the  Yankees were just a step ahead this year.

To a baseball fan, the game becomes part of your daily ritual.  It’s a long season that spans all four  seasons, running from  spring training that starts in the last weeks of winter to the Fall Classic, as the Series is called.  The Yankees played 177 regular season games not to mention all the spring training games.  It is, as they say, a marathon sport based on finding the rhythm of a team and trying to maintain it through the ups, downs and grind of this long year.  It very much mimics day to day life.

So, you follow your team and suffer through the lows and relish the highs.  Being a Yankee fan has had a lot of highs, certainly.  But the heightened expectations create deep lows when your team fails to follow through on the promise of their potential.  And this year’s team was promising a lot.  It was a team that was very easy to like in many ways.  I’ve heard fans of other teams say that it tore them up because this team was so hard to dislike.  They played hard all the time, played with joy and never seemed to be just putting in the time when they were on the field which means a lot to the day to day fans.  When you’re committed as a fan you want to know that your players are as invested emotionally as you in the season.

That’s why it’s been a pleasure following these Yankees over the last 15 years or so.  I remember reading about Joe Dimaggio saying that he played hard every day out of respect for the fans, that he knew what a big deal it was for many of them to make the trip, many from long distances, just to see the game on that particular day.  It might be the only time they’ll ever see you in person and they deserved to see you try to do your best.  I’ve watched Derek Jeter day in and day out for since 1996 and he has never made me feel as though his full attention was anywhere other than where he was at that moment on the field.  Full effort all the time.  Oh, he’s failed.  Much more than he’s succeeded.  That’s the nature of baseball.  But his effort has never lagged.

And that’s what carries the fans through the lows.  That feeling that though they couldn’t go all the way, they gave it all they had.  It’s a good life lesson.

And when they give all and win, it’s even sweeter.

Now I have a baseball void for the next few months.  Can’t wait for spring training…

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Nature Boy

Posted in Favorite Things, Neat Stuff, Video, tagged , , on November 1, 2009| 2 Comments »

eden ahbez with cowboy jack pattonSometimes when you look behind something that’s been in front of you for years you find out things you would have never imagined otherwise.  Such is the case with the song, Nature Boy.

Nature Boy, as recorded by the great Nat King Cole,  has long been one of  my favorite songs.  It has a wonderful haunting melody and tells the story of a “strange enchanted boy” and his search to find love.  It always has had a sort of mystical feel to me, a real oddity in the world of popular music in 1948 when Nat King Cole recorded and had a huge hit with it, staying at #1 on the charts for eight weeks.

I was going to just have a short post and put up a YouTube video of Cole’s version but in doing so I saw the name of the songwriter, eden ahbez, and was intrigued.  Doing a little research I came across some photos of him such as the one above, from the late 40’s sitting with Cowboy Jack Patton ( who wrote Ghost Riders in the Sky) and a spaniel.  I’ll let you figure out who is who in the photo.  ahbez’s long hair and attire seemed really out of place for me in thinking of 1948 so I read on.

eden ahbezeden ahbez was a real one of a kind character in the world of music and in general.  You could probably guess that from the name which he adopted and wrote only in lower case letters.   Born in 1908, he is regarded as the first hippie by many, a long-haired and bearded wanderer who crisscrossed the country on foot, wearing robes and sandals, maintained a vegetarian lifestyle and slept out under the stars.  In fact, when Nature Boy hit the charts he and his wife were living under the first L on the Hollywood sign, which stoked a bit of a media frenzy around ahbez.  He worked in and frequented a vegetarian restaurant (that’s where he met Cowboy Jack Patton, another interesting character) in 1940’s Los Angeles whose German owners preached the gospel of natural and raw foods.  Their followers became known as the Nature Boys.

Not really what I was expecting from a pop songwriter in 1940’s LA. ahbez died in 1995 from injuries sustained in an auto accident.  He was 87.  His was a truly unique life, just waiting for a biographer to tell the story, and reading the little I discovered makes me find the song even more interesting.  Hope you’ll do the same now that you know a bit more about eden ahbez…

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Monster Movie Matinee

Posted in At the Movies, Biographical, Favorite Things, Neat Stuff, Television, tagged , , , on October 31, 2009| 19 Comments »

Dr. Witty on Monster Movie MatineeWith Halloween falling on a Saturday this year, my mind switches back to past Halloweens and all the things that go with them.  Part of my normal Saturday routine growing up was to be in front of the TV at 1 o’clock to watch Monster Movie Matinee, a show out of Syracuse that ran for a couple of decades and showed classic ( and not so classic, as the years went by) horror and sci-fi movies.

It was a great kitschy broadcast.  It would start with the camera panning in over an obvious model of an haunted-type mansion on a hill as eerie monster movie music played.  It was hosted by Dr. E. Nick Witty (I think this is supposed to be funny but it eludes me) and his assistant, the wretched Epal. Epal on Monster Movie Matinee You never saw anything of Dr. Witty but his long emotive fingers.  His voice was kind of a bad Bela Lugosi copy that played perfectly for this type of show.  Epal, played by the station’s longtime weatherman who also played other characters (his character, Salty Sam, introduced me to Popeye cartoons) on a number of other shows, was covered in rough-edged scars and wore an eyepatch.  He seemed to constantly erode as the years passed.

They had storylines that they used as they introduced the films, little vignettes that ran from week to week.  Goofy stuff but fun.  They let the movies they showed be the real stars and I saw most of the greats through them.  All the Frankenstein, Dracula and Wolfman movies were in regular rotation in the early years mixed in with a plethora of lower quality, monstery B-movies, which kind of took over in the later years.

215px-Creature_from_the_Black_Lagoon_posterI remember one wet and dark Halloween Saturday back then spending the afternoon watching one of my favorites with Dr. Witty and Epal.  It was The Creature From the Black Lagoon.  It was a movie that was shown at least a few times a year so it became part of the kid memory bank.  It was the story of a group of geological researchers sent to explore a fossilized skeletal claw-like hand found up the Amazon where they encounter the Creature, a rubber-clad Gill-Man who makes repeated attacks on the research vessel, finally abducting the babe girlfriend of the main scientist.

Originally in 3-D in the theaters, was a pretty stylish 50’s monster movie.  Pretty good quality, actually.  The Creature was a great costume, very sleek and somewhat believable- at least to the kid sitting on the couch with the Fig Newtons.  It had nice underwater photography of the Creature gliding after his prey and also had great sound and music that really enhanced the story.  It wasn’t the scariest but it kept you involved with the story.   I always felt more of a connection with the Creature than I did with the crew of researchers and actually felt myself kind of rooting for him at times.  Much like King Kong, he seemed sadly alone.

That wet and dark Saturday many years ago seems to come to life now whenever I think of the Creature or Halloween, for that matter.  I remember the light.  The smell of that living room. Funny how certain things, even the smallest trivialities, imprint on the memory  when coupled with something important, as Halloween was to a kid.

Today I’m thinking of that day and that lonely Gill-Man and Dr. Witty…

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The Day I Got My Finger Stuck In My Nose

Posted in Favorite Things, Neat Stuff on October 25, 2009| Leave a Comment »

the_queens_noseThe Day I Got My Finger Stuck In My Nose


When I got my finger stuck up my nose

I went to a doctor, who said,

“Nothing like this has happened before,

We will have to chop off your head.”


“It’s only my finger stuck up my nose,

It’s only my finger!” I said.

“I see what it is,” the doctor replied,

“But we’ll still have to chop off your head.”


He went to the cabinet and took out an axe.

I watched with considerable dread.

“But it’s only my finger stuck up my nose.

It’s only a finger!” I said.


“Perhaps we can yank it out with a hook

Tied to some surgical thread.

Maybe we can try that,” he replied

“Rather than chop off your head.”


“I’m never going to pick it again.

I’ve now learned my lesson,” I said.

“I won’t stick my finger up my nose –

I’ll stick it in my ear instead.”


—Brian Patten

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Wild Side of Life

Posted in Neat Stuff, tagged , on October 22, 2009| 6 Comments »

Bobcat photo hi litedI wrote about seeing a bobcat or lynx a few weeks ago near my studio.  I was pretty excited because it was so much larger than I had expected, not the slightly oversized housecat that I had been led to believe it appear to be.  As the weeks passed I began to have doubts creep into my own memories of the event.  Maybe it wasn’t that big.  Maybe I was just overstating for effect.  I’ve done it before.

Maybe I was one of those people, key witnesses to a crime, who swear they’ve seen a large, dark assailant only to find out later that the person wasn’t so large or so dark.

I was afraid of a failure of observation.  Seeing more than was there.

So, I decided to set up a scout camera, used by naturalists and hunters to covertly photograph natural settings.  These cameras have motion sensors and film both single images and video.  They also have infrared flashes for night settings that flash without alarming the subject.

I set mine up in a patch of woods near my studio, a  relatively young thicket where I last saw the cat pass through and decided I would leave it there for a few days without checking it.  I really didn’t expect much.  Maybe a few of the family of deer that reside on my property.  Maybe a coyote or a raccoon.  Who knows?

So I picked up the camera on Saturday morning about 10:30 and went to check it out at the studio.  At first I thought there was nothing, just wildly swinging pictures of me trying to attach the camera to the tree as the motion sensor went  off.  Then I noticed a night photo that I first thought was empty.  Probably a breeze blew a leaf across the sensor.  Then in the corner I noticed a head.

Bobcat Night hi liteA cat’s head.

There was my bobcat.  There were the tufted ears.  But I couldn’t get a sense of scale or size.

But he was there.  I checked the time and it was two days previous, just past midnight.  I thought that was about all I would probably get but it was enough for me.  I had an image of him, at least.BobCat small walk

But then in the next photo, a daytime photo, there he was again, going under a hanging branch.  I could immediately see the scale and size of him.  He was as big as I had thought.  He was a substantial cat, much larger than I had anticipated a bobcat being.  This shot was of him walking away and the next he was turning slightly to go around the bend in the path so I could see him even clearer, could see that he was as thick and heavily muscled as I had first thought when I saw him in my driveway.  That’s the photo at the top of the post.

The time said 9:26 of that very morning, only an hour before I retrieved the camera.  I went back out and was able to measure him in relation to the hanging  branch and the several branches on the ground.  I figure he’s between 20- 24 ” tall at his shoulder (just above my knee) and between 40-44″ long.  Pretty good size.  He was quite a bit bigger than my beloved Maggie, a shepherd-husky that we had many, many years ago.

Now I know this is no big deal.  There are plenty of big cats out there.  Probably those of you who have mountain lions in your area are not impressed.  I understand that.  I’m just thrilled that I was able to observe this creature and do so with some accuracy.

Hopefully, I’ll see him again…

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Where the Wild Things Are

Posted in At the Movies, Favorite Things, Neat Stuff, Video, tagged , , , on October 15, 2009| 2 Comments »

Where the Wild Things AreThere’s a part of me that’s slightly embarrassed by my reaction to the ads running for the the release of the movie version of Maurice Sendak’s classic Where the Wild Things Are.  I find myself smiling every time the ad concludes and a certain lightness, a  kid-like giddiness rises in me at the prospect of seeing something magically special.

I don’t know why.  I’m seemingly long past the age of  kid-like excitement.  I never read the book when I was a child  so it doesn’t rekindle warm and fuzzy memories.  I usually don’t even like the idea of trying to make movies from my favorite books, usually with good cause.

But there is something very engaging in the trailer for this film.  Maybe it’s from the direction of Spike Jonze who is responsible for Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, two of the most unique films of recent years.  His choice of costuming and the beautiful golden colors of his cinematography make it so that you can’t pull your eyes from the screen.

I can only hope it meets my now raised expectations.  It opens this Friday.

There was a somewhat animated version from 1973 that was done by Peter Schickele ( AKA PDQ Bach) in collaboration with Sendak.  It’s a short piece that definitely lacks the finish of more recent animations but is true to the story.  Take a look…

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A Deliberate Pause

Posted in Current Events, Neat Stuff, Opinion, tagged , , , , , , , on October 14, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Robertson-Deliberate Final CVR A year or two ago, I was interviewed down in Alexandria by Larry Robertson, who was conducting a couple of hundred interviews with people on the idea of entrepreneurship.  Larry is an expert and consultant on entrepreneurism, advising many enterprises  and lecturing often on the subject at Georgetown and Cornell Universities.  We had met several years before at an opening for my work at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, when he had obtained a painting of mine.  several years had passed and at an opening a couple of years ago, Larry approached me with an invitation to be interviewed for a book for which he was researching.

So we met a few months later and sat for a couple of hours.  I knew that there was a certain amount of entrepreneurism in being an artist, in that you had to create a product of your own design and establish a network for distributing it out into the wider world.  Basically, you must take your own vision and make it available for others to embrace.  But I thought I had little to offer Larry for his book.

That day Larry explained to me some of his concepts that would be laid out in his book.  He described how he had observed the growth of my career in the Alexandria area and showed me in a small chart how my work acted as a pebble which, upon striking the surface of a pond (which would be the initial successful sale of my work there,) sends out waves that spread along the surface, creating more and more opportunity for my work to be seen and be successful.  He said the success of my work  was a perfect template for success for enterprises of all sizes.  I hadn’t thought of it in that way.

I came away from the interview thinking that I had indeed taken more from the interview than I had given.

Well, Larry’s book has hit the shelves.  It’s titled A Deliberate Pause: Entrepreneurship and Its Moment in Human Progress and is a really engaging read.  He features wonderful guidance from his hundreds of interviews from a wide and varying group of entrepreneurs including Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus , the developer of microcredit where very small loans are given to the very poor so that they may pursue their own vision of enterprise, along with a multitude of  other well known names.  If you have even a small amount of the entrepreneurial spirit running in your veins, this is an invaluable guide with much to offer.

I think that this spirit of innovation and individual creation of vision,  as described in this book, will be a major force in forming the future economy of this country, in pushing along new technologies and new ways of approaching old ideas.  You can go to Larry Robertson’s website for his book by clicking on the book cover shown.  Well worth your time…

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Getting Close Now- Work In Progress

Posted in Neat Stuff, Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, Television, tagged , , on October 2, 2009| 6 Comments »

GC Myers 2009 adding BlueWell, this painting, a 42″ by 60″ canvas, is closing in on what may be its final appearance, at least in my head.  I have the sky close to where I see it finishing, the village only needs some highlights here and there  and the landscape is basically set in place.

My next move is to move into the last large area that needs paint- the waterway and the land on either side of it.  I first go in with a manganese blue, a rich color that I can play off as I move along.  I often use blue for water even though it seldom appears that way in nature.  There seems to be a childish element that allows us to imagine or see blue as water.  For me, it goes back to how the color plays off the other colors.  The harmony produced is more important to me.  I also start adding color to the bridge at this point, although I see it changing in color over the rest of the process.

GC Myers 2009 Nearing the Finish LineFrom there it’s on to putting some color into the lower segment of landscape around the waterway and the structures.  I start with a dark Hunter green which actually darkens this space with a real earthy almost black green tone.  I like the way this sets everything off but am feeling it’s a little too deep and dark, almost flat in dimension.  I think that I probably lighten this soon but I first transition back into the water where I start laying in a lighter blue over the darker manganese underneath.  There is a bit of violet mixed with the blue I’m using which warms the blue just a bit.  I feel like I’m close to where I want this to be at this point but there is still a little work ahead, especially on the water and the bridge.

I start by lightening the bridge so that it has more contrast against the blue of the water.  I want contrast but not so much that the eye settles there.  I next begin adding a little depth in the green of the landscape with a mix of cadmium orange and yellow, once more put on with a light, dryish brush.  The  technique with the brush is as though I’m dusting something off the canvas with short, quick strokes, leaving only a residual of pigment.  This little bit of color atop the green makes a huge difference and I take this same color and technique into the water, really lightening the color so that it has a violet-slatey color, much less blue than it started.  Here’s where I am:

DSC_0106 smallSo I’m near the end and I really like the feel so far with this painting- but…  There’s always a but.

But I really feel it needs one more element beyond the village to bring it all together.  A real object of focus.  Like the tree or trees I mentioned in yesterday’s update.  Or I could take one of the larger, centrally located structures and put even more highlight, more brightness on it.

I’m leaning toward the tree but this is the part of the process where the painting sits for a while in the studio and I look at it over the next several days.  I’m consciously weighing all the elements in the painting to see if there is balance in the structure.  Does it hold together as a composition and do all the elements and lines make sense, not make me stop and wonder why this is here or that is over there?  As it stands, does it convey a wholly realized emotional feeling?  Lots of questions.

So, I’m at a terminus and just have to put in some mind time.  Soon it will be done…

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A Year Later

Posted in Favorite Things, Neat Stuff on September 23, 2009| 8 Comments »

Archaeology: Rising From Blue / GC MyersI just realized that it has been a year since I started writing this blog last September.  Quite honestly, I didn’t think I would keep up with this endeavor and had grave doubts as to whether it was a mistake in the first place, not really sure that I had anything to offer.  Still not sure on that account.

But it’s become a part of my routine after this last year and I come  into the studio early every morning thinking of what I might have to offer for that day.   Sometimes I come up with a blank but for the most part I can find something to write about.  I think it has went pretty well thus far judging by the number of views and the feedback I receive from folks.  But I hope to do better.

There were a couple of things this past year I enjoyed and will consider doing again, such as the Name This Painting contest.  I’d like to interview a few artists or gallery people.  I’d like to do some more personal mythology pieces.  I want to show more works-in-progress.  And more.

But today I’m just going to reflect back on the past year.  If there is anything anyone out there wants to see, let me know.  I’m always open to new ideas or questions.

Many thanks to those of you taking the time from your busy days to read.   I really appreciate it.

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The Cremation of Sam McGee

Posted in Favorite Things, Neat Stuff, Video, tagged , , on September 11, 2009| 2 Comments »

Robert Service Cabin Dawson CitySo today is September 11 and I could mention the event that will forever be linked to that date but I’m going to write instead about poet  Robert Service, who died on this date back in 1958.  Service was called the Bard of the Yukon as he came from the Great White North and much of his work focused on tales of the life of that area, the miners of the Gold Rush and the trappers for instance in a way that reminds one of Rudyard Kipling.  In his life Service achieved a huge degree of success and wealth from his poetry, something that would be remarkable in this day and age when the idea of a best -selling poet and popular culture icon seems ludicrous.  I am always intrigued by artists in any field who are tremendously popular in one era but whose name is, for the most part, lost in the eras that follow.

Much of his verse was more  about story than stringing  words together for rhythm and sound, telling  tales that dealt with the lives and deaths of the hard men of the north.  There was The Shooting of Dan McGrew , The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill and many more with equally colorful titles but perhaps his most famous was The Creamtion of Sam McGee.

I had never really heard of Service or his poem about the end of Sam McGee until this past Christmas Eve when my nephew Jeremy’s good friend and partner, Eliza, gave our family a wonderful recitation of the poem.  She had memorized it for a class recital as a young girl and has carried it with her since.  Now, that’s good baggage.

Anyway, thanks for the gift of Service, Eliza.  On this the day Robert Service died, enjoy an interesting reading by one of my favorites and another Canadian, Hank Snow.

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