Authority Figures

All were fantasy/sci-fi variants, though you could parse them further into sub-genres like Spanish steampunk, Disney-inflected French CGI, etc. Curiously, two of the three took place on or around the day that I was watching them - these were by no means Christmas movies, so I take the "coincidences" to be fated (and, therefore, not to be coincidences at all). Also, two of the three (not the same two as before) included vivid scenes of the world breaking into floating bits, like little islands untethered by familiar gravity, terrestrial rafts cast into a platformer-like dither-scape (imagine floes bumbling through the sky like balloons).

In all three, the crux was that "time-is-running-out." All three movies embodied this plot device as infernal entities: sarcophagized Sarcophagidae, anachronistic Satan, colossal skeletal dragon. However fantastically represented, "time-is-running-out" is an inherent characteristic of all narrative films.

The "darkest" of the three (and all of them were "dark") sparkled with its auteur's usual stylistic/narrative tics: weird/noble children, filigree, archaisms, clockwork, insecta.

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Around midnight several years ago, I saw a man laying on his back, cruciform, on the hood of a car. He wasn't moving and his forehead was riddled with bruises. This was in Brooklyn on a busy, well-lit avenue in front of a supermarket. Several people took pictures of him with their cellphones, and I called 911. A firetruck was the first to arrive, followed by an ambulance and finally the police. The 911 dispatcher had asked me to stay at the scene, so once the police had "secured" the situation, I asked one of the officers if the man was alright.

"He's dead," responded the officer flatly.

I felt suddenly, very sick. Another officer started laughing. I looked back at the original officer and he was laughing, too. He then made a quick gesture with his hand, suggestive of someone taking a swift nip from their flask.

"Just kidding. He's drunk."

Condensations

I made this garish, hue-adjusted, clone-stamped animation for a friend (a GIFt, I suppose); the source image is from a photo of her childhood sticker album, specifically of a phalanx of five Troll doll stickers that appear to be of the rainbow-puffy variety. And here's a bonus phalanx of five versions of a Street Fighter character (I think it's Ryu, but I'm not certain).

Maybe making a psychotronic GIF with Troll dolls and sticker albums appropriately flipped my nostalgia switch, but the completed animation reminds me of an unholy mix of the Care Bear Stare (0:45) and the Ninja Magic superpower (0:13) you could activate in the original Shinobi arcade game.

That having been said, there have been conversations at dump.fm (which is a kind of digital sticker album) about how/if the site (and/or animated GIFs in general) can be "monetized." I'm not sure if they're technically using GIFs, but I've noticed that the animations on most all video slot machines employ repetitive, cycling, GIF-like graphics. You can see many rogue cellphone videos of people playing these kinds of slots on YouTube (you're not supposed to take pictures/videos in casinos), but here's a sample from the Shinobi video slot machine (funny that video game companies have moved into the casino business... and that they're using their games as themes).

Here's a mirror match of the spastic ninja GIF accompanying this post.

Leftovers

Just rediscovered a bunch of drawings I scanned and digitally-colored from the earlier 2000's. All were ink drawings on board or paper that I colored in Photoshop. Most of the original files were ridiculously massive TIFFs, probably because I scanned many of the drawings with a mammoth rig at the NY Public Library (a friend had a gig there scanning old documents).

I've shrunk them down considerably and posted them here. Now they're all JPEGs, except for the GIF on the right (which kinda makes me want to turn all of my old drawings into GIFs...).

Spontaneous Curation VIII

Untitled by Rachel Whiteread
Untitled Film Still #13 by Cindy Sherman
Waterbury by Adrienne Garbini
Cover for Mr Pollitt's Bookplate by Aubrey Beardsley
Steigend sinke nieder by Anselm Kiefer

Phantasm

“She had four knives and two morningstars…”

KNIFE ONE: A spider motif, webs on the blade, with gauze-spooled eggs hatching babies…

KNIFE TWO: A berry motif – strawberry, blackberry, raspberry; jelly-jar blade with seed-specked filling (blood-like)…

KNIFE THREE: An Op-Art blade; maybe Vasarely, Escher – reptilian eyes gilding the hilt…

KNIFE FOUR: Standard, kitschy butter-knife handle with whirling festoons, maybe a frigate, a mermaid clutching the blunt blade…

MORNINGSTAR ONE: A rope chain with a bejeweled ball, sparkles hoarding in halos up and down the device…

MORNINGSTAR TWO: Geode crystal clusters on the ball, a knotty wooden handle with diamond-studded chain, emanating lasers, limned by faeries…

Shadow Dagger of Bending Lights +55

The wall was crooked, blue, cobbled with irregular glass spheres – every other sphere contained a little terrarium, maybe some liquid, a tide pool…

Two shelves of potions, ordered and exactly the same.

Two shelves of potions, ordered and exactly the same.

I painted my face with each finger, tracing crude pictograms of my features in black ink. The pictograms were right above or below my actual features, giving my face a maddening doubling effect that denied focus. I wore outrageous earrings and a cinched ninja hood. I never forget my mother’s ancient necklace and its intricate vignette. This is how I pose, this is how I do battle.

The busy phantasmagoria, the absurd buildup of symbols encrusting every body in a desperate blitz for identity… it takes time to barnacle yourself in nonsense; even longer to represent it efficiently. Why torture yourself for such wild, senseless pleasures? Use the impulse to plan, to schematize (your real deficiency), to generate these beautiful monstrosities – fling them out into the world, onto the screen – and then illustrate your words (which are also illustrations) into creatures that have no right in being, but insist on becoming…

Cloak, flamberge, iron, onyx, wraith, photon, plague, pox, invisibility, disintegration, void, power, energy, glass, laser, pixie, demon, druid, portal, essence, unguent, potion, key, skull, shield, barrier, thorn, minotaur, ranger, broadsword, priestess, ankh, ritual, spell, hireling, combat, armor, teleportation, acid, backstab, dragon, virus, petrify, ghost, paladin, chainmail, quiver, charisma, cartography, vorpal, staff, stave, wand, hermit, dryad, caryatid, pillar, tile, overhead, statistics, map, toll, quest, wander, adventurer, party, hireling, locket, bracelet, opal, ruby, crossbow, triple, floating, skeletal, reflective, cursed, insanity, diseased, rest, lycanthropy, scaled, plated, gemstone, crystalline, bauble, bibelot, bracers, clasps, jeweled, radiant, cape, robes, hammer, scythe, specter, haunt, revenant, zombie, cluster, band, army, hoard, dexterity, monk, avatar, skiff, helmet, bolts, axe, zone, twin, elfish, endless, enchantress, flask.

Fiery Opalescent Studded Leather Full-Body-Armor of Siren’s Song, +4 vs. Transformed Nymphs

Double Triple Mirrored Photon Ray

Clipped and chroma-blitzed from the Freedom Kirby Hyper Burst, originally posted here (reposting on Blogger always requires adjustments). They appeared to strobe in sync when I first posted them, but now they're a moment apart (wait... now they're in sync; all these contingencies/variables...).

As a general rule, power-ups are satisfying source material for generating glamorous bibelot.