josh pincus is crying

The challenge this week on Monday Artday is “mad scientist”.

No doubt Nikola Tesla was a brilliant man. He was one of the world’s greatest electrical engineers. Aside from his work on electromagnetism and electromechanical engineering, Tesla contributed to the establishment of robotics, remote control, radar and computer science, and to the expansion of ballistics, nuclear physics, and theoretical physics. In 1943, the Supreme Court of the United States credited him as being the inventor of the radio. (Take that, Marconi!) And he spoke eight languages. But…

Tesla suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder, and had many unusual quirks and phobias. He did things in threes. He was adamant about staying in a hotel room with a number divisible by three. Tesla was physically revolted by jewelry, notably pearl earrings. He was fastidious about cleanliness and hygiene, and was by all accounts germophobic. He greatly disliked touching human hair other than his own. He disliked touching round objects.
He was obsessed with pigeons, ordering special seeds for the pigeons he fed in Central Park and even bringing some into his hotel room with him. Tesla was an animal-lover, often reflecting contentedly about a childhood cat.
Tesla was a loner and was soft-spoken. However, he displayed the occasional cruel streak. He openly expressed his disgust for overweight people, once firing a secretary because of her weight. He was quick to criticize others’ clothing as well, demanding a subordinate to go home and change her dress on several occasions.
Tesla died of heart failure alone in room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel, some time between the evening of January 5 and the morning of January 8, 1943, at the age of 86. Despite having sold his AC electricity patents, Tesla was destitute and died with significant debts.
Mad scientist?
How about “Bat-shit whack-o”?

The Monday Artday challenge this week is “Schoolhouse Rock”.
From its 1973 debut, wedged between episodes of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, Schoolhouse Rock taught grammar, math and history to youngsters nationwide. Schoolhouse Rock’s quirky animation, psychedelic images and catchy tunes made learning easy and the lesson stuck with kids. Even into high school, kids were humming the Preamble to the Constitution to themselves during history tests.
Singer/songwriters Paul and Storm obviously grew up with Schoolhouse Rock.
Feeling that the original set of Grammar Rock songs was short one important part of speech, they wrote “Epithets”.

Algernon was hanging pictures over his bed
The hammer missed the nail, and hit his finger instead
The swelling started growin’
And the blood began a-flowin’
While Algernon let go with some
Epithets!

Bobby was the pitcher on his Little League team
His father would project on him his own broken dreams
He’d guzzle down the booze
And then when Bobby’s team was losin’
Daddy started to abuse ’em with
Epithets!

An epithet’s a word or phrase that people can use
When ordinary words and phrases simply won’t do
To express frustration, pain, impatience, anger or scorn
To the ****heads and the ***holes in your way

The Mayor loved the women and he loved cocaine
He got himself a hooker to keep him entertained
But after he discovered
She was working undercover
Then Hizzoner started utterin’
Epithets!

Epithets
Show emotion
Impatience
Frustration
Pain and anger
Amen

Press the “play >” button below to hear “Epithets”, from Paul and Storm’s album Opening Band.

HEY! LOOK! I even got a mention on Paul and Storm’s website! Thanks Paul and Storm.

The challenge on Monday Artday this week is “prehistoric humans”.

The first automotive trade show, circa 10,000,000 years BC.

The challenge this week on Monday Artday is “music group”. This is the second of two illustrations for this topic.

Sparks are the greatest band that you have never heard of. Their career has spanned five decades. They have released twenty-one albums. They have played sold-out shows all over the world. And you’ve never heard of them.
Keyboard wiz Ron Mael and his younger brother, vocalist Russell formed Sparks (originally named “Halfnelson”) in Los Angeles in late 1969. Self-proclaimed Anglophiles, the brothers moved to England, assembled a backing band of local musicians and released “A Woofer In Tweeter’s Clothing”.They toured the United Kingdom and released their breakthrough follow-up album “Kimono My House”in 1974. That album gave Sparks a Number 2 single in the UK with “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us” (covered by British “Flavor-of-the-Month” The Darkness’ singer Justin Hawkins in August 2005). Sparks’ cult-status success continued with one genre-defying album after another. Sparks appeared in the 1977 Sensurround film “Rollercoaster“, after Kiss turned the role down. (The Mael brothers later said that their appearance in that film was the biggest regret of their career.)
Their style jumped from rock to glam to pop to euro-pop to electronic to new wave. In 1983, they broke onto the US singles chart with “Cool Places,”a collaboration with the Go-Go’s Jane Wiedlin. Jane had run her own Sparks Fan Club as a teenager.
Known for their “off-the-wall” ventures, Sparks released “Plagiarism”, an album of covers of their own songs with guest vocalists.
2002 saw the release of their opus “Lil Beethoven”, featuring classical arrangements of strings and choirs. Record Collector Magazine named the album as one of its “Best New Albums of 2002″, describing it as “possibly the most exciting and interesting release ever from such a long established act”. Sparks appeared in the season 6 finale of the show Gilmore Girls, performing “Perfume” from the follow-up to “Lil Beethoven”, “Hello Young Lovers”.
In May and June 2008, the always-ambitious Maels brought the 21-night “Sparks Spectacular” in London, where the band performed each of their albums in chronological order during the first twenty nights, and premiered their new album, “Exotic Creatures of the Deep”, on the twenty-first concert on June 13th. Each night, they performed an album in its entirety followed by a rare track. Many of the songs had never been performed live before.
Sparks’ musical philosophy has always been to observe current trends in music and then head in the opposite direction. They’ve been doing it for almost forty years.
You haven’t heard of them? You have a lot of catching up to do.

The challenge this week on Monday Artday is “music group”.

I remember it well. It was late one night in 1974. I was in the bedroom I shared with my brother. As usual, his clock radio was tuned to WFIL-AM. Typical for a top 40 AM radio station in 1974, the air was filled with the likes of Helen Reddy, Barry White, The Carpenters and Barry Manilow. There were the one-hit wonders of the day, like “Life is a Rock (But The Radio Rolled Me)” and “Kung Fu Fighting”. But this particular night stands out in my mind. It was on this night I heard a song cut through all of the other songs. It sounded like nothing else I had ever heard. There were musical sounds and vocal arrangements unlike anything else being played on the radio. I dropped the Mad Magazine I was reading and was mesmerized. At the song’s conclusion, the DJ announced (most likely while the fade-out was still playing, as was the custom of AM disc jockeys) the song title and performer. It was “Killer Queen” by a band called Queen. The next day in eighth grade, I asked some classmates if anyone had heard this song. No one did. For a few days, I thought maybe I had dreamed up this song. Finally, in my math class, Ellen Weinraub said she heard the song. I never liked Ellen very much, but at least now I knew I wasn’t crazy.
Then, I heard it again. It was incredible. There were words I heard that I had no idea what they meant. What was “Moet et Chandon”? What was “gelatine”? And where on earth was “Geisha Minah”?
This was just the beginning. Queen’s “Sheer Heart Attack” joined my collection of vinyl LPs. It stood out like a sore thumb among Carole King’s “Tapestry” and “Rufusized” by Rufus. After owning “Sheer Heart Attack” for a week, I knew every word to every song. I could sing along in perfect sync with my new hero, Freddie Mercury.
In December 1975, I was browsing the selection at Sam Goody in Neshaminy Mall. I spotted what would become my purchase for the day. It was a new recording by that band Queen called “A Night at the Opera”. I purchased my copy on eight-track tape. When I got home, I popped it into my Panasonic Dynamite 8. Again, this sounded like no other album in my collection. And when my player clicked to “Bohemian Rhapsody”, I thought my head would explode.
On New Year’s Day 1977, I begged my father to take me to buy the newest Queen album, “A Day at the Races”. I had to get it before Hal Feldbaum did. Hal was my friend, but rival for all things Queen. Through a heavy snowfall, my dad drove me to Korvette’s and the album was mine.
My Queen experience was about to move to the next plateau. I had been to several concerts by 1977. I saw Alice Cooper in ‘74 and America right after that (The old “one-two” musical punch). I read in the paper and heard on the radio that the Philadelphia Civic Center was a stop on Queen’s US Tour. (Unknown to me, they had played at Philadelphia’s Erlanger Theatre several years earlier.) I bought tickets and secured a ride. I was as good as in. The big night came. My mom drove Hal and me to the venue. We filed in and figured the balcony would offer the best view. We found tow seats in the front row of the balcony and watched Thin Lizzy open the show. Soon, Queen took the stage. There were lights and costume changes and soaring guitars and the theatrics of Freddie Mercury. The crowd was in the palms of their hands. After the show, I bought a Queen t-shirt from a guy in the parking lot. When I got home, I noticed that the imprint was halfway between the front of the shirt and just under the right sleeve. But, it was only five bucks.
When “News of the World’ was released, Queen once again hit their mark. The double-A side single of “We Will Rock You” and “We are the Champions” was an instant international hit. When the tour dates were announced, my brother slept out all night for concert tickets. He got tickets for his friends, himself and me for Queen’s Philadelphia Spectrum show in November 1978. I was a bit upset when my brother gave me the fourth row seats and kept the front row seats for himself, until we arrived at the show and saw that his seats were facing a bank of twelve-foot speakers. Sure, Brian May talked to him during the show, but damned if he could hear what Brain was saying. Plus, from my fourth row vantage point, I was able to catch one of the three dozen carnations that Freddie threw into the crowd during the encore.
As the years went on, I loyally purchased every one of Queen’s albums on their release day. I even bought “Jazz” at midnight at Peaches Records. Nothing would stand in my way of seeing a Queen concert. I had missed a week of school with pneumonia, but I still when I went to see Queen on their Jazz Tour. Still sick.
But, something happened as the years went on. I don’t know if it happened to Queen or to me. Queen’s albums were still good, but not great. Sure, I bought them, but I found myself playing the earlier ones more and listening to the newer ones less. In 1982, I met the girl who would become my wife. She was a tie-dyed-in-the-wool Dead Head. In ‘82, I took my mom (a Queen fan) and my girlfriend (um, not a Queen fan) to see the local stop on Queen’s “Hot Space” Tour. This was my mom’s first concert and she cried when Queen took the stage. I believed my girlfriend was going to cry too, but for a different reason. She asked why they keep changing costumes. “Is it to hide their lack of talent?”, she inquired. I thought about Jerry Garcia’s usual stage garb. I didn’t answer her question.
Queen stopped touring in the United States after 1982. They continued to release albums, but they included sub-par compositions that sounded tired and bland. Freddie Mercury passed away in November 1991 at the age of 45. He died twelve hours after announcing to the press that he had AIDS. Queen and I parted ways.

Two years ago, guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor teamed with Bad Company’s Paul Rodgers to form a band called Queen. I saw them on MTV. They sound like a bad Queen cover band. They are not, nor will they ever be, Queen.

Freddie Mercury must be pirouetting in his grave.

In doing research for this challenge, I read quite a few of the tales collected by The Brothers Grimm. I really enjoyed some of the more obscure and abstract stories, specifically “The Mouse, The Bird and The Sausage.”

Once upon a time a Mouse, a Bird and a Sausage lived together in a single house. They were good friends and got along well. Each had a specific job. Mouse gathered water. Bird gathered wood for the fire. Sausage did the cooking. Every day, the Mouse would go to the well and come back with a bucket filled with water. Bird would fly to the forest and return with a bundle of sticks. Once at home, Bird would start a fire for cooking. Sausage would jump into the cook pot and slide around to grease the pot. He would slide around between the vegetables and meat and noodles until the pot was good and greased for cooking.
One day Bird flew out to the forest to gather wood and he met another bird. The two birds started talking about their lives. The other bird convinced Bird that his friends, Mouse and Sausage, were taking advantage of him. He said they were making Bird do all the difficult work, while all they did was get water and cook.
Bird flew home. He told his friends he felt they should all switch jobs. So, the next day, Sausage went out to the woods to gather wood. While he was gathering, a dog came up behind Sausage and gobbled him up.
Bird and Mouse were left. Just the two of them.
Mouse began to do the cooking. He remembered watching Sausage prepare meals. Mouse jumped into the cook pot to grease it up. The pot was extremely hot. Mouse’ s hair and skin were scalded off and he died. Bird panicked and began looking for Mouse. In his search, Bird threw pieces of flaming wood around the house. The house caught fire. Bird flew out to get water to extinguish the flames. He flew over the well and dropped the bucket in. But the bucket was too heavy for Bird. He was pulled down into the well and drowned.
Sweet dreams, kiddo!

The challenge this week on Monday Artday is illustrate a story from “The Brothers Grimm”.
Through talks with peasants and visits to small villages, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm collected some of the most gruesome, frightening and disturbing stories and published them in several volumes for children. Originally published in the early nineteenth century, these stories were watered down and homogenized over years of retelling. But in their original form, these tales of fairies and princesses and elves and animals included episodes of cannibalism, incest, murder, torture, arson, marital infidelity and racism.

The story of “The Juniper Tree” tells of a man whose wife gives gives birth to a boy, then she promptly dies of happiness. After a brief grieving period, the man remarries and wife number two gives birth to a girl. The new wife loves her daughter, but fears the family’s fortune will go to her stepson when her husband dies. She wishes her daughter will get the inheritance and she develops a hatred for the boy. Stepmom gets an idea.
One day, the daughter comes home from school and asks Mom for an apple. Mom says “You may have one after your brother has one” and she sends the daughter out of the house. The stepson come home and Mom offers him an apple from a large wooden chest. She opens the heavy wooden lid and, when the boy reaches in to take an apple, she drops the lid and cuts the boy’s head off. She doesn’t want to get caught, so she sits the boy’s body in a chair, sets an apple in his hand. Then, she ties a white scarf around his neck and sets the severed head on top, concealing the wound. Mom goes into another and the daughter comes running in screaming that her brother is sitting in a chair with an apple. When she asked for the apple he said nothing. Mom suggests that she ask again and if she still gets no response, she should smack him on the head. The daughter goes back, asks her brother about the apple and smacks him — and knocks his head to the floor. She screams in horror. Mom blames the daughter for killing her brother. Mom then tells her she has a plan to cover up the murder.
I’d like to pause for a moment to remind you that this is a story intended for children.
Mom cuts the boy’s corpse up into little pieces and cooks him in a stew. The daughter cries during the entire process, even crying over the stewpot. Her tears fall into the stew, so it needs no salt. (I am NOT making this up!)
When Dad get home from a hard day of whatever Dad does, they feed him the stew. Dad loves the stew, saying it is the best he’s ever tasted. As he’s eating, he picks out the bones and tosses them under the table. The daughter gathers the bones in a scarf and carries them outside, all the while crying tears of blood. She digs a hole and buries the bones under the juniper tree in the front yard. Suddenly, flames burst from the hole and a beautiful bird flies out. The bird flies around town, gathering specific items — a gold chain, a pair of shoes and a heavy millstone. The bird flies back and drops the gold chain around the father’s neck. Dad is pleased with his gift. The bird drops the shoes to the daughter. Then the bird drops the stone on the stepmom’s head and kills her.
The bird turns back into the boy.
Dad, Sis and boy all live happily ever after.
The end.
Pleasant dreams, kids.

The challenge word this week on Monday Artday is “paris”.

On July 3, 1971, The Doors’ Jim Morrison died of a heroin overdose in the bathtub of his Paris apartment, essentially ending Robby Krieger’s career.

I see that a band calling itself “Riders on the Storm” is on tour, with a stop near me in Atlantic City, NJ. I’d like to change my comment to John Densmore.

The challenge at Monday Artday this week is “illustrate a Beatrix Potter story”.

Beatrix Potter was born in London in 1866. She was educated at home by a succession of governesses, and had little opportunity to mix with other children. Even her younger brother was rarely at home. He was sent to boarding school, leaving Beatrix alone with her pet animals. She had frogs, newts, ferrets, a bat and two rabbits. Every summer, the affluent Potter family would rent a country house. Beatrix immediately fell in love with the rugged mountains and dark lakes, and learned the importance of trying to conserve the region, something that was to stay with her for the rest of her life. From the age of 15 until she was past 30, she recorded her everyday life in journals, using her own secret code which was not decoded until 20 years after her death.
Beatrix began an interest in biology, specifically fungi. She was later one of the first to suggest that lichens were a symbiotic relationship between fungi and algae. At the time, the only way to record microscopic images was by painting them, Beatrix made numerous drawings of lichens and fungi. As the result of her observations, she was widely respected throughout England as an expert mycologist. She also studied spore germination and life cycles of fungi. Potter’s set of detailed watercolors of fungi, numbering some 270 completed by 1901, is in the Armitt Library. She also lectured at the London School of Economics several times.
When Beatrix was 27, she sent a story about rabbits to the young son of her last governess. She was encouraged to publish the story so she borrowed it back and made it into the book entitled The Tale of Peter Rabbit. She struggled to find a publisher for it and eventually had 250 copies printed privately. A year later, Frederick Warne & Co agreed to publish 8,000 copies in a small format, easy for a child to hold and read. Beatrix was asked to re-illustrate it in colour. It was extremely well received and by the end of the year 28,000 copies had been printed. She followed Peter Rabbit with The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin. The popularity of these and subsequent books rewarded Beatrix with a substantial income from their sales. She also became engaged to the publisher, Norman Warne in 1905, against her parents’ wishes. Their opposition to the wedding caused a breach between Beatrix and her parents. However, the wedding never occurred. Norman fell ill and died within a few weeks. Beatrix was devastated.
Beatrix eventually wrote 23 books, all in the same small format. Her writing efforts finally ended around 1920 due to poor eyesight.
This illustration is for Beatrix’s book “The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse”, written in 1910. It is the story of a fastidious woodmouse named Mrs. Tittlemouse. She obsesses over keeping her home clean, constantly sweeping and chasing out unwanted visitors. She is horrified when a big, sloppy, wet frog named Mr. Jackson enters her home looking for honey.

Look! I can do cute!

The challenge word this week on both Monday Artday and sugar frosted goodness is “olympics”.

There are things I don’t like. I don’t like being manipulated and told what to like. The media in the United States has been manipulating and telling us what to like for years. The influence of the US media combined with the complacency and short attention span of the average US citizen creates an awesome power. Most recently, we, as a society, are told by the media to give our allegiance and adoration to Britney Spears, High School Musical, American Idol, Hannah Montana and countless others. We are guided, influenced and swayed to follow the every move of someone or something that the media deems “a star”. Sure, I know it’s not a new thing. I watched “The Partridge Family” when I was a kid. My female classmates in elementary school pored over Tiger Beat Magazine. And as the years go on, the manipulation intensifies.

I watched the Summer Olympics in 1972. In the years before cable television, we only received four channels, so there wasn’t much choice. The afore-mentioned Partridge Family was pre-empted, so we watched. I remember cheering that porn star-mustachioed Mark Spitz and his incredible swimming accomplishments. I remember my mom digging Mr. Spitz for other reasons, as highlighted in his famous poster. We marveled as deadpan Russian Olga Korbut executed impossible gymnastic routines. I also remember watching live coverage of the ominous horror as the Olympic Village in Munich was infiltrated by eight Palestinian terrorists. I watched the 1976 Summer Olympics from Montreal, where Romanian darling Nadia Comăneci simultaneously won the hearts of viewers and the highest scores from judges and made us forget Olga Korbut.
In between the two Olympics in the 70s, life went on. Regular television programming was resumed and interest in discussing the Olympics waned.
From 1980 until now, I have watched approximately three minutes of the Olympics. I thought about that. I have come to believe that the Olympics are much more popular in other countries than in the United States, much like soccer. The United States media attempts to whip up interest in the Olympics because so much money is sunk into it by advertisers and NBC. Unlike professional sports like baseball or football, where fans can follow a player’s career for years, Olympic participants appear in one (maybe two) Games and then retire from their sport. With each new Games, we are presented with new athletes and their stories about which we are expected to care. They are offered in such a way that we are told “these are the people you must watch for and care about.” We are commanded to watch sporting events that, aside from two weeks at the end of summer every four years, no one gives a shit about.
I have heard more stories about Michael Phelps’ facial hair and his daily calorie intake than I really care to. He seems like a good guy. I guess it’s a good thing that he can swim fast. I suppose winning eight gold medals is good. But he’s a swimmer! A swimmer, for Christ’s sake! A guy who swims in a goddamn swimming pool! He’s not a brain surgeon. He hasn’t cured cancer. And after his endorsements run out when the “next cool athlete” rolls around, he’ll be wearing a paper hat and asking if you’d like to try the hot apple pie.
The Olympic Games have grown to over 11,100 competitors from 202 countries. Have you been following the careers of these 2008 Olympic gold medal winners?
Samuel Sánchez
Masato Uchishiba
Satu Mäkelä-Nummela
Pak Hyon Suk
Chen Ying
Elena Kaliská
I didn’t think so.

The US Olympic Men’s Basketball team brought home an unprecedented nine gold medals between 1936 and 1984. In 1996, the previously amateur basketball team was comprised of the best-of-the-best of the NBA. They easily took the gold medal in Men’s Basketball. Yesterday afternoon, 2008 US Men’s Basketball teammates, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James giggled on the bench as they watched their team trounce the Australian team by 31 points. The Coubertin Medal is awarded to athletes who exhibit the spirit of sportsmanship. It is named for Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the International Olympic Committee, whose ideals are illustrated in the official Olympic Creed:
“The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.”

The original ideology of the Olympics was noble. The current ideology of the Olympics is bullshit.

*Footnote: My wife is watching the Olympics as I make this post. They just presented a story during Women’s Beach Volleyball (Yes, THAT’S an Olympic event). The story told about volleyball team member Misty May-Treanor and how she brought some of her mother’s ashes (as in cremated) to sprinkle at the volleyball venue in Beijing.
I hate the fucking Olympics.