The Boy as Rocker

My Prince in his gear for his first solo tap performance. Of course he was fab. I see Broadway, baby, Broadway!

My Pirate Name

Just in time for Johnny...


Gina, your pirate name is:



What is YOUR pirate name?

Words & Those Who Love Them

I've always had a fascination and a love for words and their origins. Back in grade school, I would do all the vocabulary pages especially those with origins. Of course I got in trouble, but I didn't care. It was all too tempting! When I go to those big book sales or to a discount book store.
I like to bop around the net to find great collections. I hope you enjoy them.

The Phrontistery
FRON-tis-te-ri, n a thinking-place [Gr phrontisterion from phrontistes a thinker, from phroneein to think; applied by Aristophanes to the school of Socrates]

With 15,500 word of obscure and rare words, this should keep you busy for a while. There's 33 glossaries covering such topics as Sciences and Studies, Colour terms, Dance styles. It's very easy to lose one's self and track of time!

Cool Words at Wunderland
A fun little quiz

Collective nouns is another favourite of mine. Books of collective nouns started to appear about 1486. The Book of St. Albans was the first, coming from a small press at St. Albans. Who couldn't love a "skulk of foxes" or a "pace of asses"?

One of the more definative collections would be found in James Lipton's An Exaltation of Larks : The Ultimate Edition
And a great online source Collectives.
They're fun to create as well. I like mine, "a slick of lawyers" and a "shrug of mechanics".


Odd & Wonderful Words

Last Night's Event

Short post today. Last night's authors' panel was a bit of a drag. Though I did get Ms. Chast to sign my books.
The first clue to something being off, was the lack of crowd. Still an intimate gathering with the artists could be nice, right?
When Paul Buckley started speaking, I got his whole laid back thing, which is fine. His co-presenter was a little too un-prepared for the exciting world of panel moderation. She was really quiet and did the "um ah" thing too much. I'm sure she's a good art director, but keep her outta the public talk circuit

I did say this post would be short, right?

Seth was an engaging person. His love for nostalgia (The man -still- does his own separations. BY HAND!!) was apparent in his work and it harkened back to the days of hand lettering, hat wearing and no computers. Roz Chast was by far the more well known out of the trio and her enthusiam for her work, her schtick had the audience laughing.

Then Anders Nilsen came up to bat. He's not very good at presenting himself or his art. There's a bit more going on in his work and it takes a longer look. But he was so quiet and UmAh lady was pitching the questions! I was like if they get anymore laid back they'll be in a coma. His work is compelling, moving in its spareness but all I wanted to do was bolt.

I think, for me, hearing how a technique was created, what materials, scrap etc. is more intriguing to me as an artist. I don't need to hear the angst. I can see it for myself.

A painting instructor of mine said and I paraphrase here "that the people that buy the art are the spinner's of all this mythos and artists inner turmoil, sturm und drang. Artists when they're together they want to know who's sleeping with who and where can I score some grass."

Article about Roz Chast
Planet Cartoonist
The A.V. Club interviews Seth

Alison Bechdel | Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

Thursday, June 22, 2006 at 7:00PM
Central Library
Ticket Info: This event is FREE. No ticket or reservation is required.

This is some great month! Alison Bechdel's memoir, in graphic novel form, about her childhood. With a gothic twist to it all, working in the family funeral home, hence "Fun Home". Ms. Bechdel's memoir is at turns hysterically funny, poignant and filled with sexual angst and discovery. While reading it I kept thinking of Charles Addams. To my delight, she draws comparisons to her home and The Addams.

A cult favorite in the comics world, Alison Bechdel has chronicled the lives of fictionalized characters in her “Dykes to Watch Out For”comic strip since 1993. Called “one of the preeminent oeuvres of the comics genre, period” by Ms, “Dykes” is syndicated in fifty alternative newspapers and is collected into a book with a quarter million copies in print.

Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions Illustrators Roz Chast, Seth, Anders Nilsen & Paul Buckley

These incredible illustrators will be here for a panel discussion on Tuesday, June 20, 2006 at 7:00 PM.

With Paul Buckley at the helm, renowned graphic artists Roz Chast, Anders Nilsen, and Seth have designed new covers for Stella Gibbons’s Cold Comfort Farm, Hans Christian Anderson’s Fairy Tales, and The Portable Dororthy Parker, respectively, as part of the new Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions. Inspired by contemporary graphic novels and comic books, the covers are by turns witty, provocative, chilling, and hilarious.

Case in point: Charles Burns cover for Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.(who may be lurking about)

Roz Chast is a regular cartoonist for the New Yorker. Her work is droll and understated but it can be wickedly funny. I always get a kick out of her work. And I plan on lugging some of my old books by her to get them signed.

Best-known for Dogs and Water and the Big Questions series, Anders Nilsen is a member of the Chicago-based art collective The Holy Consumption. Read Anders Nilsen's profile here RAW

Seth is an illustrator whose work has been featured in Details, Spin, and the New York Times; he is best-known for his comic book series Palooka-Ville.

The Graphic Classics

Imagining The Viet Nam War: Versions of a Long Conflict

I had the honor of designing and mounting this exhibit in support of our annual One Philadelphia, One Book program. The book for 2005 was Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried.


A collection of material entitled Imaginative Representations of the Vietnam War
is preserved in the Department of Special Collections at La Salle University’s Connelly Library.

It is an amazing collection to see and is a rather secret store of information. The following was part of the intro for the exhibit.

In this renowned scholarly collection – the largest of its kind in the world – is gathered a resource presently consisting of about 15,000 books of fiction and poetry and other printed items, with 500 non-print items.

Additionally, more than 600 films and videos are available. These films include narrative, commercial (Hollywood), pornography, and art films, as well as documentary films, curricular production, taped seminars, and extensive TV-generated material. The Collection is limited intentionally to imaginative literature and the visual arts. It is focused on fictive writing in the form of novels, short stories, poetry, drama, and film scripts, with extensive examples of graphic art, painting, video, TV productions, and sound recordings.

Contained in this Collection, and additional to the published written material itself, are unpublished manuscripts, corrected manuscripts, shooting scripts, galley proofs, page proofs (corrected and uncorrected), holograph copies, limited editions, variant editions, runs of comic books, and cartoon art.

The remainder of the Collection consists of carefully catalogued items of ephemera, such as poetry broadsides, dealer’s catalogs of VietnamWar fiction, published strategy games, published software, vanity publications, and curriculum guides for teaching the war through its literature across many educational levels and curricula. For more information on this unique collection: Imaginative Representations of the Vietnam War.

Dropping Knowledge

I got an email about this site Dropping Knowledge. The concept is a new spin on the round table. It's an initiative to change apathy into activity. You can take part by donating a question. They use a quote that an old illustration teacher would say to us: "However knowledge is defined, by dropping it freely to others, we all gain wisdom."

Amen to that.

A Guided Tour...

Rummaging through my salvaged work, I came across this poster. Simple straightforward, using architectural elements around the Central building. Designed in the Beaux-Art style, there's vaulted ceilings, flying buttresses of nyaids, rosettes in the ceiling, and gorgeous ironwork. The sad fact is that over time, offices were retrofitted in, with little or no care for the building's overall appearance.


From our site:"Julian Francis Abele, the first African American graduate of the architecture program at the University of Pennsylvania, received scant recognition during his lifetime despite his many significant contributions. Although Fiske Kimball, a noted architectural historian and the director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, acknowledged that Abele was "certainly one of the most sensitive designers anywhere in America" in 1942, the pioneering African American architect remained virtually unknown outside Philadelphia's architectural community until the 1970s and 1980s. Today we appreciate Abele as one of the early twentieth-century's most adept designers of revival buildings, who rejuvenated many long-dormant styles as vital, modern forms of architectural expression.

For more information: The 75th Anniversary

Billy Preston

Billy Preston at the "Concert for George"
Billy Preston. The 5th Beatle. Keyboardist extraodinaire.

Oh what a cute...WTF???

I got this from a friend to give to the boy. Oh hell no. "Ok, there's a bee called "Bee" ok. Mantis is "Mantis". Check. Ant. Here.
Ohh a ladybug called "Ladybug. And a Dragonfly with it's right name. Alrighty then! Oh? Someone missed roll call?
Cockroach, sir? Okaay. Looking and you spell that? Oh C-O-C-K-C-H-A-F-E-R."

Someone was either asleep at the wheel or a big Louis "Red" Deutsch fan.
Go look it up. Stop letting Bart get all the glory.

I was so right...

I am 15% White Trash.

I, my friend, have class. I am so not white trash. . I am more than likely Democrat, and my place is neat, and there is a good chance I may never drink wine from a box.

Take the
White Trash Test
@ FualiDotCom

I am 54% Tortured Artist.

Art is significant in my life, people are scum but I have the capicity to deal with it. Give it a few more years and I will either forget about art or hate the world.

Take the
Tortured Artist Test
@ FualiDotCom