gaw dam i wunt this

understandably, andrea has some trouble with Bad Brains' Religion. but damn, i want these shoes. the iconic thunderbolt, destruction of the capital building, and a wearable, sure to be comfortable shoe?.... i want them but cant find a place to order... so i ask you, readers of this thing, find me a link or point me in the right direction!

one of the reasons i play music and make art

i've got this as a patch .......... somewhere.
when i was a wee emo boy in catholic school i went to a lot of shows at the sitcom at 42nd and College ave. i was a bit of an outsider at shows since i was already smoking reds and never stopped eating meat... teen story aside, i was lucky enough one early summer evening to see Ordination of Aaron play the first show of a summer tour that would bring them back a month later for me to see again. i bought a 7" at the show and the A side was awesome. the B side, let me correct this, EVERY B SIDE had a number of jumps on it. apparently almost every 7" they sold that tour had a number of huge dips, making the second song almost unplayable, let alone ready for repeat listens.... the second time in town that summer someone shouted that their record was broken and sounded like shit (im pretty sure it was tony pontius or ben shine) to which the singer said they were all made that way but only maybe on purpose. two years later, in the scene, he couldve made a joke about kids shelling out bucks for busted shit that would be collectors items one day... thats another story from a time before selling out as an emo band didnt have any-fucking-thing about haircuts or tight jeans.

my point is that this band still to this day very much epitomizes what i think a cathartic show experience should be; guitar and drum parts you could probably play within a few minutes or hours of practice and a vocal part that you can try to sing along to but its really someone else's voice, their insides making the words you hear mean something to both you and them... and thats the big problem with post 90's emo; before it was connection of emotions but for the last 6-8 years its been about pussy and glam, razor blades and hair dye. no part in that thanks. but 15 years ago i saw this band and it kinda changed my life in the most subtle of ways. from the inside out.

thankfully i went to clean up my bookmarks and re-stumbled upon the sound of indie. posted was a song from the full length released that same summer (i had jason mager's copy forever, but he took it back)... its a record i would like to revisit but at the same time im sure the only way i could would be to snag the LP from someone who really loves it. in the mean time i will keep watching this video: OoA live at the sound of indie.

every f from the sopranos

say what you will about the morals or even the ending to one of the best shows ever produced.... go ahead, say it. SAY IT!!!

this video is a compilation of every curse word ever said on the show that cannot be said on over the air television. it starts cathartic but begins to numb, then turns to glee, then i remember where the story is going and the emotions start going nutty, like the show. this is totally NSFW but worth a watch, but only if you have seen the series. i know these edits are tenths of a second long, but in order they really reveal too much of the story, which is one of the reasons why its so genius.


the sopranos, uncensored. from victor solomon on Vimeo.

let me know what time it is.

i think i need this to save the country.

big ups to my aunt kathy simply for writing the words "obama watch." now i really want one.

whats good about painting with wine? you drink it.

two things out of about ten tonight stood out to me, enough to photograph badly and share (man, i need to get the photo stuff down)...

the first is something ive already written and come to terms with since: they're panties. ok? i know they are, you know they are. my approach isn't dirty but subconscious, and i know what youre thinking when you see the image. i still have some highlight work to do on the shape to provide more the definition of cloth and the sheerness, but im done trying to say its not what it is. im not that good of an artist to bullshit you into thinking youre not looking at what youre looking at. meaning is one thing, image is another. superficiality and the commercial world; they are one in the same.


calvin klein
25 x 19.5"
pencil, wine, gesso, house paint.


i also started with some marks on a sheet that i thought would turn into a logo of some sort. after some coverage and observation i found myself looking at a knee in the foreground and the rest of a thigh and torso in the background. i remembered how much fun it was to do the 'fake musculature' so i layed into the paper with a sharpened watercolor pencil. i have no idea how i will keep this thing from bleeding black after another coat of some background treatment and focused lighting work. a challenge. fine. i will take it.

fake knee
25 x 19.5"
guache, wine, watercolor pencil

these things were broken up by me trying to repair an old cassette tape i found title 17:22. i know its a sound work i did about ten years ago. in the past i would use the Playstation Music Generator to make beats and drones sampled from Fugazi instrumentals... i cant remember the theme of this tape, so i did my best to straighten out the warped/wrapped strip of tape. cassettes are a bitch because you CAN SEE THE PROBLEM through the plastic, so you keep pulling out tape, trying to pinpoint the problem inside the case, but you just keep pulling until something bad happens. i was about 1 cm away from snapping the tape, so i stopped in hopes that one day this year i will amass all of my broken tapes, open up the cases, repair the actual tape, reassemble and enjoy tones from the past. i know i have a problem getting rid of cassettes that may/may not have anything of value on them, but every once in a while i will find some one minute long song (or a ten minute jam) from when i was so concentrated on a theme that i really CAUGHT something, really recorded a moment that may resonate with someone besides myself. in my mind, that is one "truth" of Art and proof that someone IS an artist - the ability to bottle a moment (or a series of times) in a form of choice and have it mean more than just that moment.

man, i didnt have that much wine. wtf.

new (old) tools

kewl tewls
i just KNEW i had a heat gun stored away in my fathers air force issue foot locker (along with a sunny day real estate and sonny rollins lps)...

i have had two bottles of wine evaporating their last drips of merlot/cabernet goodness on my desk for about a month now. then, last night after going to see phoenix bodies play in a basement (the best way, by the way), me and the wife along with good friends jenny and antonio were smoking waaaaay too many cigarettes in the office when i decided to drop some wine onto a page of a new blank book i made this week. jenny was a little amiss that the line of concentrated, fermented grape juice looked a lot like an earthworm. she had been part of a childhood turf war in Muncie, IN and let me know that she once had a can of worms dumped on her head. no dirt, just worms. awwwww. isnt that cute?!? no. its gross (but kinda cute, right?)
wine on canvas (200?) 9x9

blah x 4. ive done two "real" paintings with wine on primed, white canvases. i love them. i would love to do more, so i bought a couple bottles of crappy wine at aldi (really, not that crappy since i will drink two of them) with the intention of getting some pretty layers of the earthy color that only wine on primed surface can provide. sloppy layers of wine (possibly cooked down for concentration this time around) can be dried with the heat gun in a few minutes. i like showing the process, the layering of color, but really, waiting around to watching wine dry is boring. use the technology you want to to make the image you want.

i wish i had a monotype press. i also happened across a post-card portfolio from 2000. herron and the university of tennessee did a little print exchange. i remember being so happy to get my classmates work and well, more than a little let down with the out of state mailings. maybe if i plug in the ole scanner i can share some goods and bads? you wanna?... my piece was an ink jet color print of a tank firing a big shell with a thick burgundy colored colograph on top. it looks immediate and is named after an Unwound album. yea! undergrad! i should get back to that kind of work. steal an image, crop and re-place on black background, place a violently drawn layer of line over it. simple. effective.

match this with a few (2) started underwear pieces. not as sloppy as the previous bra pieces, but still cool, to me, at least. a little more realistic, but de-sexualized as far as connotation and color choice. i would love to reduce the shapes to just that (a shape) and forget about the anthropological weight of underwear, while still letting the viewer know thats what it is. the challenge to illustrate the triangular shape of a pair of womens underwear, complete with lace trim, and expect viewers to NOT see a fetish-istic element? whatever. really, whatever.

oh, and that IS a managector in the top pic. hello contour!

Hokusai's most famous woodcut on a PSP? yes.

im not that big into hand held gaming, but this skin for a psp makes me want to ride the bus and play call of duty, just for fun!

neats

via: destructoid!