Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Monday, November 24, 2008

What's in your kitchen?

A recent pile of junk mail we received included a Crate & Barrel catalog. This page caught my eye because of the weird looking items in some of the storage containers:

l was wondering what the hell all of these odd items could be, and where they came from, when I noticed text on what looked like animal crackers, but it was difficult to read.

l eventually realized that the photo had been flopped, so the text appeared as a mirror image.

Good old Photoshop came through and revealed words on the mystery snacks:


Would you care for a pigeon cracker or a rat biscuit?

Work in Progress

Preliminary study for a commissioned painting. It's better than earlier attempts -- which are too lousy to show here -- but it still has a way to go.

It's not looking enough like the intended subject yet, and in fact reminds me of someone else completely.



With a little more refinement and perseverance, I hope I can get it adjusted to where I'm happy with it.

I posted another example of this iterative process in June, while working on a portrait of James Coburn.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Jim Copp Stuff

My friends at Playhouse Records were kind enough to send me a copy of the new book, Jim Copp, Will You Tell Me a Story?, published by Harcourt. It includes a CD of Copp's original 1958 recordings of the three wacky tales, and is available from Amazon.




In the 50s and 60s, Copp and Brown recorded 9 LPs worth of surreal stories and songs in their home studio. Each year the two pals would travel the country selling LPs from the back of their car to department stores and toy shops.




My favorite is A Journey to San Francisco with the Glups, a bizarre road-trip saga. This was the first Copp-Brown record I'd ever heard. I bought it at The Doo-Dah Shop, a long-gone used record store that was near the University of Pittsburgh campus.

Having missed out on these recordings as a kid, I discovered them during my formative early-college years.



Playhouse has two best-of collections available, and they're very nice nice samplers. I reviewed them for Cool & Strange Music, and have posted the review here.

All of the Copp-Brown recordings are worth looking into.